Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by jtav
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Matthias Shepard only wants two things: to be a great artist and stay sane. Not to be a biotic superweapon. Fate-and Miranda Lawson-have other plans.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: Thanks as always to my wonderful beta fongiel. I'm also more than usually indebted to the posters of The Character Room. Any errors are mine._

_Warnings: violence, strong language depiction of mental illness, sex between a sixteen and twenty-year old._

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><p>Our model was supposed to be pretty, I guess. She had long, straight blonde hair, tan skin without so much as a scar, and big brown eyes. Most of the others guys in class were staring at her like they were wolves and she was a nice, juicy steak. I couldn't. To me, she just looked like every other aspiring actress I'd ever been forced to use as a live model. They all started to blur together after a while. Or maybe my aunt was right and I really did need to see a shrink.<p>

I squinted and studied her a little more carefully. If they were all blurring together, then I wasn't doing my job right. Before she died, Ms. Sarovsky had liked to talk about how portraiture was all about capturing the essential nature of the subject. Any hack could do a decent likeness. I was supposed to make Amy, Andrea, or whatever her name was leap off the paper. I looked again. Faint freckles that all the tanning in the world couldn't hide dotted the bridge of her nose. She had an oval birthmark on the base of her neck. She had a pert little nose that practically screamed "Look how cute I am!" Probably plastic surgery. The hair was probably bleached. Hardly anyone had naturally blonde hair anymore. She'd spent a fortune to look like that.

Aha. That was my way in. She wanted to be a model or actress and she was willing to spend thousands of credits and have a crapload of surgeries to do it. She was willing to model for a bunch of stupid high school students. That took dedication, even if I didn't think it was quite working for her. I could bring that out. A nice straw yellow for the hair, reds and golds for the skin. Just a little this side of unnatural to show how hard she'd worked for it. But first I had to finish the sketch. I picked up the charcoal pencil. Easier to erase than the oil pastels I would use for color, and I'd been off my game enough for the last three months to be on guard against stupid mistakes.

"Note that the nose is about as long as the eyebrow." Mr. Pendersen had a reedy voice that set my teeth on edge. He was thin, his collar bone and elbows jutting out at harsh angles. "And kindly stop chewing that gum, Ms. Fletcher." Pendersen always called us Mr. or Ms. It was old-fashioned, just like the dark shirt and pants he wore. Reds, greens and golds were everywhere on Eden Prime, but Pendersen preferred to look like an undertaker. He didn't miss much, though, and he was a pretty good teacher—or he would have been if he wasn't stuck explaining the basics of proportion to people who didn't want to learn anyway.

Becky flushed and put the gum away. For a long time, the room was filled with nothing but the sound of pencil on paper, punctuated by the occasional comment from Pendersen as he moved around the room and looked over our work. I could feel his gaze on me, but did my best to ignore it. Right now, the model was more important than he was. "Good job, Mr. Shepard," was all he said before he moved on to the next person. I kept drawing, but I couldn't help smiling a little. Last night was the first time since Mindoir that I hadn't had nightmares. Maybe I had finally turned a corner. Maybe I didn't need that shrink.

The door opened. Eddie stumbled in. His dark hair was even more of a mess than usual. He grinned a little too broadly and spoke a little too loudly. "Afternoon. Sorry I'm late," he said without a trace of remorse. I cringed. Eddie was an okay guy, even when he was sandblasted, but he was horrible about hiding it when he was using. Red sand wasn't a huge deal on Eden Prime, but it was still technically illegal.

Pendersen gaze reminded me of a hawk going after a field mouse. "How nice of you to join us, Mr. Martinez." He probably knew that Eddie was coming off a high, too, but it wasn't like he could prove it. Eddie hadn't been dusting up long enough to stain his teeth or anything else that was obvious. "See me after class. For now, you can sketch Ms. Hardy here."

Eddie saluted and plopped down in the seat nearest me. I heard him as he rummaged in his bag and pulled out his supplies. He was close enough that I could smell the cologne he was using to cover up the red sand. It was a strong, clean scent. I was really familiar with it. It was the kind my older brother had liked, the kind he had been wearing the night the batarians came.

I could feel the sweat forming on my palms. My throat constricted, and my heart beat faster. My breath came in harsh, short gasps. _Fight it. Fight it._ I was supposed to be getting better. I wasn't supposed to freak out over something like cologne. I needed to finish this drawing. Art class had always been my refuge, the one thing in school that I was really good at. The batarians weren't supposed to be able to fuck this up too.

But I couldn't fight it. The smell seemed to take over the whole studio, except now it was intermingled with things that weren't there: blood and dirt and sweat. The hair on my arms stood on end. My skin tingled. The last time that had happened, I picked up a salt shaker on the other side of the kitchen just by thinking about it and tossed it at one of the slavers. It had saved my life, but I couldn't let that happen again. There were stories about what happened on Jump Zero. I had to get out of here now. Before I had a heart attack or worse.

"Bathroom," I squeaked. "I mean, I have to go to the bathroom."

The rest of the class stared at me. I could tell nobody really bought it. Some of them shifted in their seats or cleared their throats awkwardly. And the rest of them... pity seemed to roll off them in waves, like they knew I was a screwup. Even Penderson couldn't quite keep it out of his voice when he said "Of course, Mr. Shepard." But I was too busy fighting off the memories to be humiliated.

I managed to make it to the nearest bathroom without running. I sat down on the toilet and buried my face in my hands. The place was choked in the omnipresent odor of cigarette smoke that made my eyes burn a little. Wetness ran down my cheeks. I could feel myself shaking. There was a dim part of me there was aware I should try to get control of myself because what kind of fuck up had a nervous breakdown over cologne? But most of me was enveloped in a nameless terror and grief. All my muscles tensed. Any second I expected to hear the _rat-a-tat-tat _of assault rifles or screams and thuds as people ran for their lives toward whatever hiding place they could find. The scream of the batarian as I hit him so I could jump out the window.

I wasn't sure how long I set there, but eventually my brain sort of started working again. I could feel something soft and crinkly under my foot. A plastic bag. There were flecks of red powder at the bottom. Well, at least I knew where Eddie had been shooting up. I didn't get it. There were lots of things that could have given him a really good high. They'd managed to make heroin and cocaine virtually harmless decades ago, just like they'd done with cigarettes. I'd seen him move papers and such for a few minutes after a hit. Why anyone wanted to be a biotic, even for a few minutes, was beyond me. It was scary as hell. I checked my chrono. Class would be over by the time I got back. Part of me wanted to run home as fast as I could, but I'd left my supplies in class.

People were already leaving by the time I got back. Eddie's skin was a little more ashen than normal. I wonder if he knew then it was his cologne that set me off or if he was that terrified of Pendersen giving him a detention. With any luck, they would be so preoccupied with each other that I could get my stuff and go home without either of them saying anything.

"Could I talk to you for a moment, Mr. Shepard?"

Shit. So much for luck. Eddie looked from me to Pendersen. "Does that mean I don't have to stay after?"

Pendersen's glared at him again. "Don't think I've forgotten about your tardiness, Mr. Martinez. I expect you and I will be spending a great deal of time together in the future." He sighed. "But, yes, you can go."

Eddie fought a smile for a second before he noticed that I'd gone even paler and slumped down in his seat in an attempt to look more contrite. He muttered "See you outside," before he left. I squared my shoulders. I knew what was coming. People have been giving me the "concerned adult" spiel since my parents died. The Alliance soldiers that found me, my aunt, everybody. I didn't know whether to be angry or scared.

"I'm worried about you, Mr. Shepard." His voice was softer than I'd ever heard it. He was trying for concern, but it sounded odd coming from him. "I know the past few months have been difficult for you: losing your family and coming to a planet so very different from Mindoir. I know you've had trouble adjusting."

I forced a wide smile. Before the raid, I'd always been able to charm people pretty easily. Might as well try that first. "Not that much."

He raised his eyebrows. "And I suppose you really had to go to the bathroom?"

"Too much soda at lunch, sir."

He sighed again and leaned forward, steepling his fingers as he did so. "There are people trained to talk to those who've been through traumatic experiences like yours. No one would think less of you for talking to someone."

"No!" It came out as closer to a screech than anything, and I wanted to clap my hands over my mouth. I couldn't see a doctor. One: I was managing to function. It wasn't like I was babbling or catatonic like some people. Two: the meds that the doctor would give me might turn me into a zombie who couldn't draw. I wasn't about to screw up the one thing I really loved. Three: I'd have to lie about what happened on Mindoir. Sessions were supposed to be confidential, but the Alliance was really trying to find all the biotics they could. I've heard stories of guys in suits showing up to take people away to Jump Zero. I didn't know whether it was to study or train them. Maybe both. I did know that there were on awful lot of biotics in government jobs, and there were rumors that it wasn't entirely by choice. That every biotic was documented. If people found out what I could do, I could forget about art school and a normal life. Psychologists were really good at catching liars, and it was easier to avoid them than fool them. "I'll be fine. I just need more time."

"It is your choice, Mr. Shepard." He sounded old and tired. "You're a very talented artist. I think you have a decent future ahead of you and I don't want you to lose it."

"I won't." Not to the memories and not to people who might use me for I didn't even know what.

We went around like that for the next few minutes. Eddie was still waiting for me when I got out of there. It surprised me. Like I said, he was an okay guy, but I didn't know that I would really call us friends. Eden Prime was a lot bigger than Mindoir had ever been, but it was still pretty small. Most of the people in my class had known each other since they were in diapers. It wasn't like they were mean to me, but there were dozens of little moments—old friendships and petty grudges—that I would never be a part of. I stood as close to him as I dared, and made sure I was standing downwind.

Eddie pushed his dark hair out of his face. "Are you okay? I thought you were going to puke back there. What did the old vulture want?"

"He noticed I was about to puke, too." I smiled a little, trying to pass it off as a joke. "Nice job coming to class sandblasted, by the way."

Eddie whipped his head around furiously. "Don't say that so loud," he hissed. When no cops came to haul him off for possession of an illegal substance he added, "Strictly as a hypothetical, maybe you should try some."

"What?"

"Biggest rush in the world. It must be so cool to be a biotic." His eyes glittered with undisguised glee. "You can move things with your mind. Picked up a skycar and throw it at somebody. Make a lot of money cheating at hand quasar. Hike up Becky's skirts a lot easier."

"Not cool. It's terrifying. What if you kill someone by accident or they kill you because they're terrified of you?"

"You are no fun at all," And with that, he walked off in the direction of his beat up old skycar.

Me, I had to take public transportation. Aunt Gwen had promised me a car for my next birthday, but that was still a few months off. The monorail was crowded with midafternoon commuters, some of them unfortunate high school students like me and others heading home after work. A few of them nodded or smiled at me as I passed. I did my best to smile back as I headed to the furthest corner I could find. I found myself next to Mrs. Dyar. She didn't say anything, but she never did. Everybody knew her story, even me. She'd been downwind of a transport crash and exposed to eezo. She'd given birth to a baby girl, Samantha I think the name was. Sam was healthy by all accounts until she'd had a sudden seizure and died. Another person whose life has been ruined by the supposed "wonder element." She'd been trying to sell the house she'd lived in with her daughter for years, but nobody had taken her up on it. I would have loved to sketch Mrs. Dyar. Her nose was too large for her face, and grief had aged her prematurely. Her hair was a very light blonde, as if it had faded away along with the rest of her. Lines etched her face, and she always moved as if she were weighted down by her grief. It would've been a challenge to try to capture that, far more interesting than another cookie-cutter model.

I could hear voices talking in the living room by the time I got home. That was strange. We didn't often get company at this hour. Aunt Gwen worked long hours as a neurologist at the med center in Constant. She hardly ever socialized outside of work and I'd never seen her with a boyfriend or girlfriend. "Married to the job," she'd said when I asked. I didn't know anybody at school well enough to invite them over. I crept inside quietly. One of the nice things about living in a more established colony was that the prefab units were starting to be replaced with real buildings with real carpet, even if that carpet was a truly appalling lime green. I was able to sneak right up to the open living room door before they noticed me.

A woman I didn't recognize stood with her back to me talking to my aunt. They navy blazer she wore seemed to cling to her like a second skin, and did nothing at all to take away from her curves. She wasn't some twiggy borderline anorexic like our model had been. I could see a patch of pale skin that stood out sharply against shoulder length dark hair. Her shoulders were tensed, as if she expected to be attacked at any moment. The voices rose and fell. I couldn't hear the words, but I could make out the tones: Aunt Gwen calm but with a slight edge of fear, the anonymous woman cold and contemptuous. She was the one who noticed me first, pivoting suddenly to stare at me.

She should've been gorgeous. Her cheekbones were high and prominent, her skin nearly flawless. Eddie would have been drooling over her breasts. Her eyes were a soft blue a few shades lighter than my own. Every feature was perfectly formed. It was like someone had taken all the things we usually found attractive about women and put them in one person. But there was something deeply, profoundly _wrong _about her that made my mouth go dry. I looked for some little quirk or unusual feature I could focus on-small blemishes, one eye being higher than another, a slightly crooked nose, anything. But I found only everything my books had ever told me was ideal.

I'd made drawings like her before, back when I was still learning the basics of portraiture. Absolute technical perfection, but no life whatsoever. I'd never thought to see one of those early sketches brought to life and standing in my living room. What would have been mediocre in a drawing was downright eerie in a human being. Skin as smooth and pale as marble. Marble. That was what she was. A carved marble statue, every feature perfectly carved and perfectly symmetrical. She would have made a wonderful statue. Perfect.

But perfect wasn't human.

She strode forward and held out her hand. "Matthias Shepard?" Her voice was harsh and cold with the same Australian accent Aunt Gwen had. She either came from money or wanted to sound like she did.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up again. What had I done to attract the interest of this strange, unearthly woman? It was hard to tell her age, but she couldn't be much older than me. The only thing I could think of was that the Alliance had somehow found out what I'd done, but I couldn't see any official insignia. "That's me." I took her hand tentatively.

Her grip was surprisingly strong. She probably could've crushed my fingers if she'd wanted to. "My name is Miranda Lawson. I'm with the Milky Way Foundation. I wanted to talk to you about your biotics."

Shit. My mind was racing. There had to be a way out of this. There had to. I hadn't worked so hard and held myself together to get carted away now. "I'm not a biotic. That's crazy!"

She smiled, and it somehow made her even more frightening. It wasn't a warm, friendly smile to put me at ease, but a predator baring her teeth. "Oh, I rather think you are. There's a batarian in Alliance custody who swears you threw a salt shaker at him using biotics. According to your medical history, you don't have any implants."

"Of course I don't have implants! I'm not a biotic."

She ignored me. "Being able to lift and throw something without implants is extraordinary. Normally latent biotics can only manage shifting papers or small qualities of sand. You, Mr. Shepard, may just be the most powerful biotic humanity has ever seen."


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I am profoundly indebted to TCR and themarshal for helping me with this chapter.

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><p>The first thing I was aware of when I could breathe again was my aunt's gaze on me. Her dark eyes seemed to be taking me in for the first time. I could imagine her poring over a medical scan or sizing up a new patient in the same calculating way.<p>

"There was never any indication that Matt was a biotic. Mark and Jennifer never mentioned her being downwind of a transport crash. And there are test for these things. I find it hard to believe he could evade them for sixteen years."

Miranda's eyes were hard. The tension in her shoulders turned her rigid. I was struck with the odd thought that she was mere moments away from either rending my aunt limb from limb or shattering into a thousand pieces. "You of all people know how terribly inefficient bureaucracy can be, don't you_ Dr. Shepard?_" The subtle stress on her name was laced not just with vague contempt, but what I could only describe as hatred. "The Alliance couldn't be bothered with a backwater like Mindoir. A latent biotic could have gone unnoticed for years.

The pure malice in Miranda's voice made me even more uneasy, but also curious. Dad hadn't talked about his sister much, but he'd never said anything bad about her. The citizens of Eden Prime treated her with the respect due a skilled professional who had left a lucrative practice on Earth to work in the colonies. Though she had never told me why she'd left the practice. It wasn't important anyway. The important thing was to get this uncanny woman out of my living room so I could go back to my regularly scheduled life that didn't include being a biotic.

I crossed my arms over my chest and did my best to give Miranda an intimidating look. "Or you could just be way off base." I towered over her and outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, but it didn't seem to bother her. I might as well have tried intimidating a glacier. "All you've got is the word of a miserable slimeball of a slaver. I've got news for you: crooks lie."

The fury left her as quickly as it came, and she gave me another predatory smile. "You're right. He is scum. I have no doubt he'll be spending the rest of his life in an Alliance prison, but that doesn't seem like enough, does it? Someone should make people like him pay as they truly deserve. Someone has to protect those colonists, why shouldn't it be you? You're lifting salt shakers now. I imagine what you could do with an implant and decent amp. There wouldn't be anything left of those slavers."

I won't lie: she tempted me for half a second. The squints had ruined my life, and I'd spent a lot of time thinking of ways to kill them for the first few months after the attack. And the idea that I could stop another Mindoir from happening... well, if that wouldn't make the nightmares go away, then nothing would. But no, I'd be shipped off to Jump Zero to undergo who knew what training. They didn't let family visit out there. Too much of a security risk, they said. I'd be alone again. And the Alliance wouldn't leave me alone afterwards either. I'd be documented; my life subtly directed and nudged until working for them was my only option for a decent existence. No art school, no freedom, no anything.

"I'm not a biotic."

The smile widened. I took a half step back to get away from her. She twirled a finger around a stray lock of hair with practiced casualness. "Perhaps. A real biotic would have been able to save his family. His parents, his brother and sister, all of them. But you? You were helpless."

"No!" Something broke inside me. The next few seconds were flashes of sensation. A sharp, metallic taste in my mouth. Energy coursing down my spine and across my arms. My arm swinging outward. Miranda smirking at me. And the fury that consumed me.

_Not my fault._ _Not my fault. _The next thing I knew, I was on my knees, coughing. Red flecks appeared on the carpet. I was coughing blood. And I felt like I'd been trampled by a herd of elcor.

It was Miranda's turn to tower over me. A rapidly fading blue aura crackled around her. "Impressive. You're far more powerful than I ever dreamed. I'd say that was forty or fifty newtons of force." She made a dismissive noise. "Though I wouldn't suggest trying it again, I do want you alive."

What the hell had I just done?

My aunt was beside me in a moment, hauling me to my feet and leading me to the couch. Miranda had demolished the last of my pride, so I let my aunt help me like I was some cripple and collapsed onto the couch. I wasn't sure which was worse: the pain or the humiliation. I suffered through my aunt asking me if I knew who I was, where I was, etc. I was pretty sure I was fine, physically. The rest was up for grabs. I was an idiot. I'd played right into Miranda's hands, and now she knew what I was. She could do whatever she wanted to me. She'd probably get some kind of bounty for delivering a biotic to the Alliance.

Apparently, what she wanted to do right then was turned on her omni-tool and scan me. The device made several approving beeps, and Miranda nodded to herself. "Mr. Shepard, your vitals are excellent. I think you have the constitution of a horse. Anyone else would have probably burst a blood vessel trying that without amps and training. And fifty newtons..." She directed a wintry, withering stare to Aunt Gwen. "I don't need to tell you how impressive that is."

I'd seen pictures of people pale with supposed shock. Normally, it's a metaphor, a cheap little bit of artistic shorthand to let the viewer know that your subject is afraid. But I saw the color drain from my aunt's cheeks until she was half living woman, half corpse.

"You think Matt's more powerful than Eldfell?" she whispered.

"And apparently without the nasty side effects." Miranda's tone was smug, even triumphant.

"Who's Eldfell?" Anything to get the conversation off me. I'd heard of Eldfell-Ashland Energy, but I'd never known them to have much to do with particularly powerful biotics.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Miranda arched a single perfect eyebrow toward my aunt, as if daring her to speak. Finally, my aunt cleared her throat. "Claire Eldfell is the only person who ever manifested biotic abilities without in-utero eezo exposure. Her father discovered a krogan medical procedure to implant her nervous system with eezo directly. She was the most powerful human biotic on record." She fidgeted slightly. "But there were side effects: crippling pain after sustained usage of her biotic abilities, seizures. She died about seven years after the operation." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "There was an article in the _Galactic Journal of Neurosocience._

I felt cold and sick to my stomach in a way that had nothing to do with my biotic outburst. Claire Eldfell's dad had implanted her with eezo nodules deliberately. Most people who were exposed to eezo ended up with cancer or went crazy from the implants. And Claire Eldfell had suffered pain and seizures for what it sounded like a very short life. What kind of sick fuck would do that to his own daughter?

Miranda addressed me directly. "And you're much stronger than she was, by the look of it."

"So what you want to do to me?" I'd thrown everything I could at Miranda, and she was still here. Nothing left to do but raise the white flag. "Implant me and ship me off to some camp? Make me do your dirty work if I survive that long?"

Her laugh was as cold, harsh, and humorless as the rest of her. "Mr. Shepard, I told you I was with the Milky Way Foundation, not the Alliance. We do want to give you the appropriate implants and amplifiers for you to make effective use of your abilities. Training, as well." She wrinkled her nose. "I'd love to send you to a boarding school, but you've had a very traumatic year and there are some concerns that uprooting you again could lead to 'adverse psychological effects.' You aren't any more use to us crazy than you are dead. And you'd be outfitted with the new L3s. We've only just finished our final testing, but there's every indication that they won't lead to the side effects of the L2s."

_Every indication._ That was reassuring.

"And the training?"

"One-on-one, here on Eden Prime. You'd be able to go to school normally." She smiled again, and for the first time looked as if she didn't want to devour me alive. "I've been asked to be your instructor. Because of our closeness in age, I imagine." There was a slight tension in her voice that suggested that that wasn't the whole reason.

"You?" I guess she would have been a good teacher if they wanted to terrify me into being a good biotic.

Her eyes darkened, and the way they caught the light reminded me of the sapphires. "It's a much better deal than you would get if the Alliance ever found you. They _would _send you off to some boarding school. They would you use for their own purposes. If you were a very good little boy, they might make you a military officer. You could forget about that art school you wanted to attend."

"Let me guess: the Milky Way Foundation would have to tell the Alliance about me if I turn you down?"

Her hard, glittering eyes were the only answer I received. They were the only answer I needed.

I exhaled sharply. It wasn't a good feeling, being blackmailed. I needed to have some power, or at least pretend I did. "Let me think about it."

"I'll be back tomorrow." And with that, Miranda was gone. She moved with an easy grace, no hesitation or wasted movement. Perfect and uncanny, just like the rest of her. I shivered.

"I'm going to my room." Aunt Gwen didn't try to stop me.

My room had been the guest room before I came to live there, and it still didn't feel like it was really mine. The bed was too big, the sheets real cotton instead of the scratchy synthetic stuff I'd grown up with. My aunt had tried to make it seem like it was really mine. The bookshelves along one wall had been repurposed to hold my supplies: graphite, charcoal and pastel pencils, brushes, palate and palate scraper. And of course, the paints. Dozens of shades and hues just waiting for me to put them to use.

It was the paper and charcoal that I reached for. Miranda had all the cards when it came to my biotics, but I still had one scrap of petty power over her: I was the god of this blank page. I could render her any way I pleased. I bit my lip and thought about what I wanted to do. Not caricature, no. Miranda Lawson demanded my respect as much as my fear. She was one of those goddesses I'd heard about in my grade school literature classes: terrifying, awe-inspiring figures who could turn mere mortals into spiders with a flick of their graceful wrists. She demanded no less than her due.

In the end, it was my initial image of the living statue that I returned to. The bones of her face were perfectly molded, her proportions taken straight from my anatomy books. Her lips curved upward in a small smile that promised misery or glory to anyone who dared trust her. Her hair fell around her in waves, carefully shaded to suggest not just black, but the multitude of highlights the real woman possessed. The eyes glittered with equal parts malice and intelligence. This couldn't be mistaken for some amateur attempt at rendering a human face. I had to capture the real, terrifying Miranda.

It had been a long day, and I found my attention wandering halfway through her perfectly sculpted nose. Claire Eldfell, of all people, flitted across my thoughts. I wondered how old she had been when she died. No older than eighteen. We hadn't been able to link biotics and eezo until after first contact, and the implants would have had to have been inserted before she hit puberty. Plus another seven years. I had a sudden image of her: pale and fine-boned. Too tall and thin to be cherubic, but with a sad, sweet expression that made what her father had done to her all the more horrible. Her hair was all soft, golden curls, her eyes a mix of blue and gray that could turn sapphire in the right light.

No, wait. Those were Miranda's eyes. I resented the intrusion. I had my pleasant little fantasy of the wronged innocent, and Miranda had left whatever innocence she might have possessed behind long ago. And yet, the image would not leave me. I looked at my half-finished sketch. The two girls would have made for a fascinating contrast if I'd had the slightest idea what to do with them: real, unnerving woman and illusory, angelic girl. One forced to suffer because of her father, the other compelling me to embark on a new life. One of victim of biotics and one touting their power.

I returned pencil to paper. Damn Miranda Lawson. If she were invading my work as well as my life, she could at least have the decency to serve as a model in payment.


	3. Chapter 3

_Nos Astra, one month later_

Miranda had told me my suite in the Regia was going to be nice. I'd pictured a smart little business hotel with a couple of connected rooms with a bathroom and maybe a minibar. But this was... obscene. I looked around, not quite believing what I was seeing. The walls were he gleaming white. Full-length windows let in the mid-morning sun while blocking out the noise of the plaza below. Tufted golden and crimson carpets bearing all sorts of strange geometric figures covered the floor of the reception area. Low couches and chairs were arranged in a semicircle around a small, mirrored table. A marble and gold—real marble and gold—staircase led up to an as-yet-unseen upper level.

"What kind of hotel suite has levels?" I muttered.

"The kind paid for by groups with more money than sense," my aunt said. "Or the kind with a staff that doesn't gossip."

There was a sharp knock at the door. Miranda, of course. She'd exchanged the navy blazer for an equally flattering gray and white jacket that made for a fascinating contrast with her dark hair. She carried a black leather case in one hand. Black, white, and grey, set off by those remarkable blue-gray eyes that seemed all the more remarkable for the contrast. Very nearly chiaroscuro. I studied her for a moment, imagining playing with light and shadow to bring forth the contrasts and give her weight and depth.

She held my gaze, challenge in her eyes. _Look at me, _she seemed to say. _I've been looked at all my life. I know that I terrify you. Do you think you can scare me, painter? _So I looked, noted her smooth, unblemished skin and the way the technical perfection of every feature combined to form an eerie whole. To be honest, I'd spent a lot of time contemplating her looks in the past few weeks. She seemed to compel me to render her on paper and canvas. I'd already filled half of a sketchbook with drawings of her. The other half had been filled with renderings of my imaginings of Claire Eldfell. It beat thinking about everything that I'd agreed to.

The tension built and built between us. I couldn't let her make me flinch, not when she would be teaching me. Her lips curved upward and she nodded, as if I'd passed some test. My aunt cleared her throat, and the rest of the tension evaporated like steam.

"I think this suite is supposed to come with an office," Aunt Gwen said hurriedly. "I need to catch up on my paperwork."

Miranda's slight smile vanished. "That's fine. I'd like to speak to Mr. Shepard in private."

"Will you be all right, Matt?" My aunt had been really reluctant to leave me alone after the incident in her living room. Not enough to cut back on her hours or really get insistent about the shrink, but enough that I noticed. She was watching and waiting for me to explode again, but I wouldn't let myself.

I opened my mouth to tell her that, but it was Miranda who answered. "He'll be as safe with me as he is with you, _doctor._" Again the subtle stress on her title laced with an undercurrent of malice. I still couldn't figure out what the hell was behind it, but Aunt Gwen flushed as she made her way through a side door.

I watched her go. "You really don't like my aunt, do you?"

Her face turned to stone. "No, I don't." I thought that I had seen her cold on the day we met, but this was a deeper, more solid emotion: the difference between "I'm going to intimidate you" and "Do not mention this again if you value your life."

I did the only sensible thing. I let it drop. "You wanted to talk to me?"

Miranda brightened so quickly that I was left scrambling for breath and trying to keep up. I should have been grateful that she wasn't furious or mocking for once, but she still unnerved me. The only people who should change emotions the way some people changed socks were actors, and even then, not that fast. Her smile lacked the mocking air I'd come to expect, but I'd have almost preferred it to this false warmth. She lifted the case. "I, or I should say the foundation, has a present for you. Something to help you pass the time while you recover."

Inside was an array of about two hundred oil pastel pencils of every color imaginable. I ran my finger down the edge of one that was the color of pine needles. These were professional grade tools, not the cheap five-credits-for-a-large-box pencils that my mom had bought me when I was five, or the much better ones that I had bought from Constant's one and only art supply store. With these, I could create colors softer and more vibrant than I ever had before. They were also expensive as hell. Each pencil here would have cost two or three credits apiece, plus shipping costs.

"Thank you," I whispered as I closed the case and placed it on the table. I was profoundly grateful, but unease still clung to me like mist. Dad had never understood my fascination with art, but he had managed to pass along a few life lessons, the most important of which was that nothing was ever really free. "Why are you doing this? The pencils? The hotel room with the marble staircase? Not that I'm not grateful, but you can't be spending all this money out of the goodness of your hearts." And I hadn't forgotten what she'd done to get me here.

"Smart boy." Miranda moved to the window, and I followed her almost without realizing what I was doing. The sunlight played across her skin, and I could notice details that I hadn't during our first meeting: the translucent vein running down her throat, the subtle blush on her cheeks, the almost imperceptible shadows under her eyes, almost but not quite obscured by makeup. It was the last that held my attention because it clashed so violently with her apparent perfection. She'd had a sleepless night, the same as anyone could. The thought cheered me far more than it should have.

She seemed oblivious to my observation. "Do you realize how much we don't know about biotics? We spent years on fruitless experimentation and had to rely on the Council races to tell us it was linked to eezo. And, even now, we don't know why some children get cancer while others become biotics. The first generation couldn't do anything more impressive than levitate a chair for a few seconds. The second generation has tremendous power but terrible side effects. We tried creating an artificial biotic to control for random factors. You know how that turned out: crippling pain and an early death. But you? You're more powerful than the L2s or Claire Eldfell. And you don't have any of the side effects. That outburst the day we met would have killed most people, but you're fine. Everything I learn from studying and training you will be used to create strong, healthy biotics. If everything goes according to plan, you'll be the first of the third, successful generation."

The strangest thing happened as she spoke. Passion transformed her face. Fatigue evaporated before an all-consuming energy. What I had thought was a statue was suddenly alive, vital, and human. More than human. Energy crackled through her like lightning or a biotic surge. I saw now what those perfectly sculptured features were meant for. I had judged Miranda while she was inert. In motion, seized by a genuine passion, saying she was beautiful hardly did her justice. It would be like describing a Caravaggio as beautiful and expecting that to explain the entire painting. It didn't matter whether I believed her or not. Her belief in the cause consumed both of us in that moment. I wanted to seize the pencils and capture the moment before it faded into memory.

Fade it did. These things can't be sustained. The energy fled her, and Miranda seemed almost ephemeral with its loss. Hard, impersonal perfection once more, except that the exhaustion seemed to cling to her more fiercely. I felt exhausted just looking at her. And bereft. I wanted to bask in that energy once more.

Miranda, though, was all business. I wondered if she even noticed what had happened. "So, you see, you are incredibly important. Don't screw this up." She clapped her hand on my shoulder, but the effect was spoiled by her arm convulsing in a sudden, violent spasm.

"Are you okay?" I asked automatically.

"Fine." She flushed in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. "May I use your restroom for a moment?"

I could hardly say no to that, and Miranda marched steadily and implacably up the staircase. I threw myself onto one of the couches. Just when I thought I had her figured out, she revealed some new detail. I'd called her a glacier, but she possessed fire as well. Not just an emotionally manipulative blackmailer, but a true believer. All these conflicting facets existing in a single paradoxical whole. How could I capture that? Was I capable of it? Was anyone?

I thought, too, about what she'd said about me being the first of a new generation of biotics. Eezo had killed Mrs. Dyar's daughter. It had crippled and killed Claire Eldfell, but not before giving her what sounded like a hell a lot of biotic power. I guess that was supposed to be an improvement. Two failed prototypes discarded on the inevitable march toward progress. All leading towards... me? No pressure.

No pressure at all.

* * *

><p>"Matt, could you put that thing away for five seconds?"<p>

"Sorry," I muttered and closed the notebook where I'd been trying another sketch of Claire Eldfell. "Helps my nerves."

"It's just tests today." I was pretty sure that was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn't.

The waiting room was crowded with people from every species in Citadel Space. I'd never seen aliens in person before that night on Mindoir, and there weren't that many on Eden Prime. I did my best not to stare too obviously. The asari were lithe and just human enough to be exotically beautiful instead of weird. Several of them had strange, intricate markings on their face like tribal tattoos. I wondered if they were tattoos or some genetic quirk. One of them—a pale, nervous thing I noticed mostly for the lavender freckles across her face—had markings almost exactly in the shape of eyebrows. Weird.

I was trying not to look at the batarian who sat by himself in the corner, but my gaze kept darting to him without my conscious control. He looked just like the slavers. They all looked alike to me. The extranet said that the batarians who left their homes were mostly pirates, slavers, and other crooks. And one was sitting in the waiting room on the fourth floor of the Illium Medical Center. Lucky me. The muscles in my neck and back corded with tension, and my breath came in short, quick gasps. Fight or flight. Predator or prey. There were days I felt like everything in the world was divided into those binaries. Especially me. It was a relief when they finally called me back.

"Want me to come with you?" my aunt asked.

I shook my head. It felt stupid and childish to have my aunt go with me when I was almost seventeen.

The room was surprisingly ordinary. I guess I was expecting something more exotic because it was asari, but it looked just like the sort of place we might have used to give blood back in the colonies. The cramped room was dominated by a single bed and a cabinet containing what I assumed were medical supplies. Miranda had taken the lone chair while an asari tech bustled around the room. Miranda regarded me with a cool disinterest. My aunt had made it sound like the tests they were doing were routine—jab a needle in my neck, get some readings, done—but Miranda must have felt the need to observe everything. I was starting to think I was some kind of special project for her.

"Mr. Shepard, if you would please take off your shirt and lie face down on the bed?" the tech said.

I did as she asked. Miranda watched me as I did so, and I flushed under her gaze. It wasn't lust, exactly. I'd had a girlfriend on Mindoir, but Violet had never looked at me like that. Miranda looked at me the way I looked at paintings of old masters: trying to study and analyze so she could re-create. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse.

Something happened to me as I lay there, exposed. I could hear the tech moving around Miranda tapping her foot impatiently against the edge of the chair, but I couldn't see either of them. The skin along my arms prickled as my breath came faster and faster. I was terrified, and I didn't even know why. My body tensed. I wanted to leap up and make sure no one was going to attack me. Which was ridiculous. It was a_ hospital_ for God's sake. Batarian in the waiting room aside, no one was going to attack me here. Why was I acting like this?

"Are you all right?" I couldn't decide if Miranda was worried or annoyed.

"Fine," I managed through gritted teeth.

The needle went in at the nape of my neck. It hurt like hell, but that wasn't what bothering me. I was shaking. Actually shaking. _Run. Get away. They'll hurt you._ I had to stay calm. Miranda had goaded me into assaulting her, but I knew it would be very bad if I freaked out in front of her now.

Something beeped, and the needle came out. "I didn't know human readings got that high. You normally only see this level with commandos."

I grabbed my shirt and threw it on as fast as I could. It was damp against my skin where I'd broken out in a sweat. The sooner I was out of there, the better. "So I've been told." I made for the door.

"I'll walk you out. It's a big hospital. I wouldn't want you getting lost." Miranda smiled and grabbed my arm.

I tried to pull away, but her grip was vise-like. "That's not nece—"

"Of course it is," she said, with a sweetness that was somehow terrifying. I'd seen her cold and I'd seen her passionate. This false friendliness wasn't Miranda Lawson.

It lasted until we reached the hallway and we were more or less alone. "What was that?"

I shrugged. "Nerves."

"Don't lie to me." Her eyes were dark with anger, and she was once more the icy, terrifying creature that I had first seen. "I've seen people who were nervous and people who were afraid for their lives, and you looked a lot more like the second one. What was it?"

I didn't dare lie to her when she looked like that. "I got a little weird when I couldn't see what was going on." I gave her a weak smile, trying to pass it off as the little quirk I hoped it was.

Miranda's face softened abruptly. It wasn't pity. The expression was too thoughtful to be pity. Understanding, maybe? "Hyper-vigilance, of course," she said, more to herself than to me. "We'll attempt to account for that in the future, though I can't promise anything. Any other problems I should know about?"

I thought about the day we'd met, when the smell of cologne had forced me to go to the bathroom for a few minutes. At least I wasn't a gibbering wreck. Everything else would come, wouldn't it? "Nothing I can't handle."

"I hope you're right." She shook her head. "I'd hate to see what you would do with that power if you can't." And with that, she walked away.

Definitely no pressure.


	4. Chapter 4

My aunt rose from her seat when she saw me stagger back into the waiting room. "Are you all right?"

A hot flush of embarrassment spread over my face. Would people stop asking me that? "Never better. Did you know that I'm as strong as an asari commando?"

"Have as much potential as one. We won't know exactly how strong you could be until they fit you with an amp. The L3s are supposed to be more stable, but there are always outliers." Her smile was weak and a little nervous. The slightest disturbance would break it. "I'm a neurologist, Matt. I know a little about biotics. And you're shaking like a leaf."

"Well, let's see. I'm about to have something stuck in my head that's going to give me telekinetic powers that some organization wants to train me to use because they think I might be some kind of biotic superhero. Think I might be a little nervous?" I sure as hell wasn't going to her about the... whatever it was that had happened back there. It was stupid of me to panic like that, and she would buy this easier.

She softened. Guilt might have flickered across her face, but it passed too quickly to be sure. I couldn't think what she could feel guilty about, unless it was true what they said about doctors being arrogant and she blamed herself for not being able to protect me from the Milky Way Foundation. "It'll be all right," she said in that way people had when they thought you wanted to hear comfortable lies.

I was still too nervous and weak from the panic attack to be really angry at her. She was right. I was shaking like a leaf. And Miranda was right too, as much as I hated to admit it. I needed to get a handle on myself before the surgery.

I let her shepherd me out to the car. It was hotter in Nos Astra than it had ever been on Mindoir or Eden Prime. Drops of sweat that had nothing to do with nerves appeared on my forehead. The city was awash in the golden light of midafternoon as the sounds of traders negotiating various deals filled the air. My translator couldn't keep up with it all, and the alien speech blurred together in a cacophony of haggling. You could buy anything on Illium, they said, even give a kid biotic implants without the Alliance ever knowing about it.

We retreated to the safety and air conditioning of the skycar, and I slid into the passenger's seat. "Maybe we could go to the T'Rena. It might help calm me down." The T'Rena Museum of Fine Art was the largest of its kind on Illium. Pieces from all over the galaxy were displayed within. They'd acquired Rosetti's _Baeta Beatrix _from the Tate a few years after first contact. It had raised a big stink among the Earth-first types.

_"They are removing an icon of Earth's cultural history rooted in a specific time and place and taking it somewhere it cannot possibly be appreciated."_

Idiots.

I'd never been able to see much classical art at the colonies. Mindoir was both too small and too new to support a real museum, and Eden Prime wasn't much better. I'd always had to make do with holographic reproductions and replicas. We might get some minor Warhol for a week while it was on its way to somewhere else, but I wasn't going to be in contact with any real masterpieces until I got out of the colonies and into a decent school. And now I was in one of the hearts of art and culture in the Terminus System.

Well, it was one thing I could be grateful to Miranda and the Milky Way Foundation for. Assuming I didn't lose my mind first.

We drove through the air without a word for a long time, Aunt Gwen navigating the traffic as if she'd been doing it all her life. Sometimes I forgot that she hadn't always lived on Eden Prime and that she'd spent most of her life in Sydney. I wondered if she missed it. I would have gone crazy knowing I had given up having an entire megalopolis worth of art at my fingertips.

"I looked through your sketchbook while you were back there," she said without either preamble or a trace of guilt. "Is there something you want to tell me about you and Miranda Lawson?"

My brain just stopped for a second. I never let anyone look through my sketches unless it was for a class or something. And the sketches I'd been doing lately certainly weren't for class. Miranda and Claire might someday give me something fit for public consumption, but until then the drawings were mine alone. My way of exerting power over a woman who fascinated and scared the shit out of me depending on what mood she was in that day. It wasn't like I just wanted to rip her clothes off. It would've been easier if that was all it was.

"I—it's not like that. She's just... interesting. And don't look at my sketches."

She made a noise of exasperation in the back of her throat. "Can you blame me? You spend more time drawing thing you do talking. And lately, it seems like it's the same two girls over and over. Who's the other one? Please tell me there something going on with her. That I could understand."

"It's Claire Eldfell."

The words came out before I could stop them, and I could tell by the look on my aunt's face that I should've kept my mouth shut. My aunt went as corpse-pale as she had the day Miranda Lawson had barged her way into our lives. "Claire Eldfell?"

My cheeks grew hotter. For the first time, I considered what my work must look like is someone on the outside. She would send me to that shrink if I wasn't careful. "Well, what I imagine she looked like before she died." I searched and fumbled for the right words, but my fascination with Claire had always been harder to explain that my fascination with Miranda, even to myself. "You called me another Eldfell. I guess you could say that I identify with her." It sounded horribly inadequate, but maybe it was enough for her. I didn't really want to think about my obsession with a dead girl, except that it was better than thinking about what Miranda wanted to do to me or waiting to go crazy again.

"Besides," I added with a smile I didn't feel, "a beautiful woman who died young and tragically is one of the standard artistic subjects."

"It's morbid. Yes, what happened to her was horrible. But she's dead!" Her voice shook with barely suppressed emotion. "You don't even know anything about her. The girl you're drawing isn't even real. She's just a figment you dreamed up."

I stared at her; I couldn't help it. I'd never seen my aunt upset about anything. Exasperated, concerned, but never upset. But she was right. I didn't know anything about Claire Eldfell. I'd approached her the same way I would some mythological figure, giving her the features I thought she should have because of what she represented. I didn't know if she really had those golden curls I'd been drawing for over a month. "Any particular reason she pisses you off?"

"Besides you being obsessed with her? No."

I didn't have to look at her to know she was lying. Funny. Miranda wouldn't tell me why she hated my aunt, and my aunt wouldn't tell me why she was freaking out at the mention of a dead girl. Maybe it was time to do a little sleuthing. I was beginning to think I'd never figure anything out about Miranda, but maybe I could do a little due diligence on Claire Eldfell. Stop drawing a shadow and start drawing the real girl. It beat thinking about the surgery I'd be having the next afternoon.

But for now, there was the museum and the Rossetti. The T'Rena was a gleaming building that seemed to be covered in chrome. Like every other structure in Nos Astra, there seemed to be no real corners or angles anywhere. Everything smoothed together in a series of gentle curves. The ceiling was high as a cathedral. I fought the urge to gawk. Everywhere I turned, some piece of alien art confronted me: turian metal sculptures bent and twisted into strange shapes that looked like useless scrap metal to the casual observer but was actually supposed to be a representation of the battle at Canrum; an asari painter's representation of the last of the Protheans, kneeling among the ruins of some barren world, weeping for the loss of their species; a hanar videograph that moved and shifted like water. I was never as proficient in alien art as I should have been, and I didn't understand half of them. But merely being able to see all of them in person was a revelation. No holograph could capture the thousand nuances of color and light, of shape and form. And they would stay here and not move on to exhibition somewhere else. Any citizen could look at them any time they wanted. I wonder if they knew how lucky they were.

The Rosetti was on the fourth floor along with an eclectic collection of human art. The torso of a statue of Nike, her arms had been long since lost to the ages, stood side-by-side with a Rembrandt. I drank in the sight of them, but they weren't what I was here for.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti's _Beata Beatrix._ Both a representation of his namesake's muse at the moment of her death and a tribute to his wife and model, it had always been my favorite of the Pre-Raphaelites. Beatrice's eyes were closed not in agony but a rapturous ecstasy. She could see heaven already. Golden light shimmered around her auburn hair like a halo in a medieval painting of a saint. Perfect for the woman Dante had never quite seen as mortal. The shadowy figures of people and the city itself lurked in the background. But everything paled before the idealized woman. Not just Dante's Beatrice. In every stroke of the brush, I could see Rosetti's love for his wife, a pure, idealized love that he had only ever been able to express through his art. I'd consider myself the luckiest man on earth if I could ever produce anything that evoked half as much emotion.

It was late by the time we got home. I waited until my aunt was safely doing paperwork on the level below before turning on the computer. The nice thing about being put up in a ridiculously expensive hotel suite by a foundation that seemed perfectly willing to throw ridiculous amounts of money at me was that I had a much better extranet connection that I would at home. Claire Eldfell would stop being just a figment I dreamed up.

Or she would be if I could find anything on her. A quick extranet search turned up several Claire Eldfells, all of whom were very much alive and none who were any kind of biotic. If she really were the only one of her kind, you'd think she would have been mentioned somewhere. Maybe she really was a shadow I'd dreamed up.

I didn't even know if her dad really was the same Eldfell that ran Eldfell-Ashland, but he was supposed to be one of the richest guys in the galaxy and one of the few people I could imagine being able to pull off something like this. I did find out plenty about him. Nicholas Eldfell lived in Sydney. No partner or kids, but the gossip rags put him with enough starlets and models that I felt a little twinge of jealousy. Press photos showed a handsome man with clear blue eyes and thick dark hair, with just a touch of gray at the temple to make him look distinguished. The beginnings of crow's feet attacked the skin around his eyes, but the rest of him was smooth and even. His eyes had a glint that exuded confidence even through a photograph.

The only weird thing I found was his charity work. He was on the board of some foundation called Arcian. As best I could tell, they were some kind of pro-transhumanist organization that wanted to build better humans. They'd thrown a boatload of money at genetic engineering research. Ways to slow down aging or make us faster and stronger. Nothing about artificial biotics.

Artificial biotics. Aunt Gwen had mentioned that she had read about Claire Eldfell in a medical journal and that whoever had turned her into a biotic had used some kind of krogan procedure. Maybe I could find that article, though it still left the question of why I hadn't been able to find Claire Eldfell on the extranet. I found a database of scholarly journals. You had to pay a ridiculous amount of money in a yearly subscription fee to access the articles themselves, but they let you read the abstracts for free. It was better than nothing. I typed in _artificial human biotics._ There were only a handful of results. One in particular jumped out at me.

"Toward More Consistent Results of Element Zero Exposure—Can We Make Our Own Biotics?" Dr. Gwendolyn Shepard, M.D. 2158

Holy shit.

* * *

><p><em>Author's note: The details of Beata Beatrix were as accurate as I could make them<em>. _It really does hang in Tate Britain and was painted several years after the death of_ _Rosetti's wife.  
><em>

_And now a question for you guys: would you prefer the fairly short chapters I have now and the quicker updates that go along with them or longer, less frequent chapters?_


	5. Chapter 5

I stared at the screen for a long time, not really understanding what I was reading. My aunt had wanted to make artificial human biotics? Then why had she just told me that she'd read some article about it? Unless she'd had something to do with actually creating one and didn't want me to know about it. And only one artificial human biotic had ever been created. That would explain why she'd lied to me and why every mention of Claire Eldfell freaked her out.

No. No way my aunt would be involved in something like that. We hadn't been close before my parents died—birthday and Christmas cards, stuff like that—but I'd know if she was the kind of person who stuffed somebody's nervous system with eezo to turn them into a biotic. There would've been some tell, a maniacal glint in her eye when she heard how powerful I was or something. And she worked at a colonial med center when she could have gotten ten times that money if she'd stayed on Earth.

But why hadn't she told me the truth? And why had she left Sydney? Wasn't that where Eldfell lived? Way beyond coincidence. I bought the article. Let my aunt and the foundation yell at me later. Most of it was a lot of biological technobabble, but a few words and phrases jumped out at me:

…_krogan procedure allowing direct implementation of element zero nodules... eliminate undesirable results such as malignant brain tumors... discontinued after infliction of genophage due to 63% mortality rate, but survivors exceptionally powerful... would require a subject engineered to have exceptional endurance and healing factor such as certain members of special forces or other persons who have undergone extensive genetic engineering._

And just to confirm my worst fears "Funded by the Arcian Foundation" was displayed in an almost unreadable font at the end.

Definitely way beyond coincidence.

I stood up and stumbled toward the office. Part of me wanted to just forget the whole thing. There had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation, but I'd stay up all night worrying about it until I heard my aunt tell me what it was. The office was paneled with real oak, very dark and dignified in a way Earth architecture hadn't been for a couple of centuries, which made the orange light of the computer screen look faintly ridiculous and out of place. Aunt Gwen was hunched over the screen, and I had to clear my throat to get her attention.

"Matt, you should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, and we have to be up early." She squinted and looked at me. "And you look like you're about to be sick. Did something go wrong with those tests?"

"No. I got to thinking about what you said about me not really knowing anything about Claire Eldfell, so I did some research." I told her about Arcian and the paper that I'd found. My words came faster and faster as I talked. I'm still not sure if I was trying to get it over with or just keep her from getting a word in edgewise so she could tell me to stop. "That procedure you wrote about, that's what Claire Eldfell had done to her, wasn't it?"

She'd gone paler and paler as I spoke and the computer screen gave her an unhealthy orange glow like someone who used too much tanning lotion. "Yes." The word came out as a croak, not speech.

"Then why didn't you tell me that you'd written a paper on it? And that Eldfell's foundation was the one who paid for it?"

She laughed, short and bitter. It was a sound I'd never heard from her before, and it made my stomach turn hearing it. "Lawson swore you wouldn't find out about this if I went along with the surgery, but she forgets about the extranet. You must understand how little we knew about biotics in those days. It was this vast field of untapped knowledge. We hardly knew what we didn't know. Children were moving things with their minds or getting cancer, and there was no way to tell which it would be until it was too late. And the aliens knew so much more than we did. If things ever went south, we'd need a reliable supply of human biotics to counter them, but the process was too random. And then I heard about a krogan procedure that would remove the randomness. I was thrilled."

Her lips curled into a sneer. "I approached the Alliance with my theories and ask for permission to begin preliminary tests. The bureaucrats thought it was too risky. And then the people from Arcian came. They were very interested and very generous. They told me I could help create something better than human."

I stood transfixed to the spot. This person who spoke so enthusiastically about the advancement of humanity was not my aunt. "It didn't bother you how many people would die from failed operations?"

"We knew there would be risks, but I thought we could minimize them. I was very, very good. And I thought my volunteers would be soldiers. I'd never planned on a child."

Of course. My voice shook with something that was half hysteria and half relief. "So they took your research and hired some sicko to implant her. That's not your fault."

She looked at me. Pain seemed to etch the lines in her face deeper and deeper by the moment. "I wish to God that was what happened. The girl was everything I needed. Her father had built her from the ground up to be stronger and tougher than any normal human could be. No post-birth engineering could ever hope to match it. And Eldfell was very determined that his daughter be the first of the new biotics. I was horrified, of course, but he told me that he'd just find someone else. There were plenty of doctors perfectly willing to take his money. It might as well be me."

I felt like the floor had given way beneath me. My legs shook. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears.

_Lalala, I can't hear you. _"Y-you're the one who implanted her?"

Her eyes glittered with something I had never seen before. Defiance. "Anyone else would have killed her on the operating table."

"You did kill her!" Tension spiraled through me. I would have taken Miranda's offer of biotic training in that moment just so I could break something. My throat burned. My eyes burned. Everything burned. "You stuck eezo in her just to see what she would do! And you killed her!"

"Yes, I did. And I have spent every day of my life trying and failing to make up for it. There's not a day I don't think about that girl. I made a horrible mistake."

"A mistake? You told me yourself: 'she was in pain every day of her life.' That's a hell of a lot more than a mistake." The world seemed to tilt and shift on its axis. Cold sweat broke out all over my body. My whole family had died except for the mad scientist, and she could do anything she wanted to me. Maybe she already had. "You must've been so thrilled when you found out what I could do. I'm your second chance to make a super-biotic. If you can't create one yourself then, hey, handing me over to the people who can is almost as good."

"Matt, I would never... if it were up to me, you'd be on Eden Prime."

But I was out the door. My legs carried me to the elevator, across the lobby, and into the Nos Astra night almost without my conscious control. Some dim part of me that was still capable of rational thought registered my aunt calling after me, but I didn't stop. I wasn't thinking, not really. I was an animal given over entirely to my feelings. A hundred different emotions swirled around in my brain, blending together like colors. Anger, shock, horror, fear and grief all spewed onto the canvas of my brain. "How could she?" over and over again in a thousand different tones.

A soft gust of wind hit my cheek, knocking me out of my stupor. I looked up and blinked a few times. Nos Astra never truly slept, but she was a different beast at night. Lights from a thousand windows illuminated the plaza, giving it a strange silvery glow. Intermittent alien voices intermingled with the roar of the occasional skycar. I looked up. No stars. You could always see the stars on Mindoir and Eden Prime, even in Constant, but the bright lights of Nos Astra blotted them out. Fake stars to replace the real ones. Every scrap of real nature hidden away. The whole city was artificial. Fake.

Fake. Fake like my aunt. What had happened finally hit me and I doubled over like I'd been punched in the gut. I'd been living in the same house as someone who'd experimented on a kid just to test some theory. I'd heard about those kinds of people and there were always strange rumors about places like Noveria and even here, where the only thing that mattered was money and more money. A doctor would do anything if they were paid enough. But those had always been rumors and two-credit holovid villains. I couldn't imagine living in the same house as one, couldn't even imagine going back to the hotel.

But where was I supposed to go?

"Mr. Shepard?"

I jumped and turned to face Miranda staring at me. The light from a stray streetlamp fell across her face, creating strange shadows that only increased her eeriness. But she seemed less grand, less intimidating. She had always carried herself with the erect, regal bearing I normally associated with long ago royalty or goddesses. No one cowed her and no one broke her. It had been one of the things that drew her to me even though she terrified me. But tonight she stood with a slight hunch in her shoulders. It was as out of place as the never-explained spasm in her arm had been.

"What are you doing here? You should be getting some sleep." Even her voice had lost some of its crispness. "Hurry along hold before I have to deal with your aunt reporting you missing or some nonsense like that."

"My aunt's the one who should be reported!" Her apparent weakness made me brave and I nearly shouted at her. "I'm not sleeping under the same roof as her."

_And you can't make me_, I wanted to add. I didn't because it sounded like something a little kid would say and because Miranda had done a great job of making me do things for the last month.

"So," she said softly, "you finally found out about the good doctor's work with Arcian? Let me guess: a little due diligence on the extranet? It couldn't happen to a nicer woman." The fatigue in her voice was still there, but laced with a now-familiar malice.

"You knew all this time what she'd done? That's why you hate her so much, isn't it? And you let me stay with her?" Not really that surprising, considering her people wanted to do the same thing to me.

"Yes, that's why. But we shouldn't talk about it in the open. And you shouldn't be out here either. Nos Astra only looks safe and friendly." She gestured at a parked skycar. "Come with me before someone decides to mug you or worse."

Her steps were short and halting, as though she were taking great care to keep from falling. I wondered if she had somehow managed to hurt herself since that afternoon. But she didn't ask for my help, and I didn't offer. I did follow her. She was the only other person I knew in Nos Astra, and I trusted her more than I did my aunt just then. She was blackmailing me and forcing me to get L3 implants against my will, but she'd been honest about it. I knew where I stood with her. And she was probably right about the mugging.

The light from inside the skycar revealed new details. Her skin was as pale as ever, but it wasn't marble, but something sickly, and her face was lined as if she was in pain. Her hands were steady on the wheel, though, and she moved through traffic with the same easy fluidity as my aunt.

"I'm not sure I should be grateful that you found out or not. The last thing you need is an additional stressor. And I'm sure my superiors will be delighted that we've lost that bit of leverage over her. But it's the least she deserves." She inhaled sharply. "I wish I could give them what they truly deserve. But Illium isn't the only place justice can be bought and sold." I couldn't tell whether she was angry or just sad.

We pulled to a nondescript apartment complex a few minutes later. "I'm in #1429. You can take the couch while I figure out what to do with you for the rest of the night."

Miranda and I took the elevator to her apartment in silence. As the minutes wore on, I noticed her leaning more and more against the elevator wall. Her breath came in short, quick gasps. The cold perfection was gone now. She was smaller, weaker, brought down to a human scale. I ought to have been relieved. I could handle a human, but I had no hope against goddesses or living statues. I wasn't. "Are you all right?"

She ran a hand through her forehead. "I'm fine. Long day. Like you, I'd imagine." The elevator door opened, and I followed close behind her.

My aunt was standing outside waiting for us when we got there. Her eyes were red from crying, and I felt a pang of stupid, illogical guilt. "Ms. Lawson? I don't know where—" Her eyes widened when she saw me. "Matt? Oh, thank God!"

Miranda clenched her fist. "Your nephew is fine, Dr. Shepard. I found him a few blocks from your hotel. Since he doesn't want to stay under the same roof as you, I'm going to find somewhere else to put him for the night."

"No! I let you blackmail me into going along with this, but if you think I'm going to let you take charge of him, even for a night..."

Miranda arched a single perfect eyebrow, though the lines on her face made her look more haggard than menacing. "Please. If I wanted to do something to your nephew, you wouldn't be able to stop me. His honor is entirely safe with me, I assure you." Her lips curled into a sneer. "As for the blackmail, it's a very, very small fraction of what I'd like to do to you. Be grateful my employers find you useful, doctor. If it were up to me, you'd never be allowed near a child again."

My aunt's eyes glittered with the same defiance I'd seen earlier. "As if you're so much better than me. The only difference between us is that I feel sorry for what I did. You're no better than Eldfell, experimenting on a child to get your precious super-biotic."

Miranda went rigid. At first I thought the pain had finally gotten to her, but she shivered. I could see small arcs of biotic energy coursing across her bare skin. The pain melted away before her fury. I'd wanted to see her passionate again. Well, now I was. It was as if there was a lightning storm going on inside her and flashed with barely enough to contain it. Anybody with any sense would have run away screaming, but my aunt and I were rooted to the spot. "Do. Not. Compare. Me. With. Him." Each word was like the grate of metal on metal. "Get out of here." She lifted her hand, letting us both see the biotic power thrumming within.

Aunt Gwen did the entirely sensible thing: she left.

The energy swirling around her dissipated like so much smoke and Miranda stumbled against the door. She didn't say anything, but her breath came in short, shallow gasps. I caught her shoulder by instinct and shifted so I could take some of her weight so she wouldn't collapse on top of me. I was too stunned to do much else. This graceful, not quite human creature was worse off than I was the day we'd met and she'd made me vomit blood. And I had no clue what to do. We'd just chased off the nearest doctor. But I couldn't just leave her like this either. Even blackmailers deserved better. "What do you need me to do?"

"Help me inside," she said through gritted teeth.

I obeyed her, and we staggered into her apartment. It was like walking into a disused furniture store. The chairs, couch, and table looked like they had been taken from a ten-year-old decorating magazine, but hardly used since. There were no paintings or photographs or any sign that someone lived here. Creepy. I guided Miranda to the couch and she collapsed on it with a grunt.

I stood there, awkward and helpless. It seemed somehow indecent to see her weak like this, more indecent than seeing her naked would ever be. I didn't like her, and I was pretty sure that she just thought of me as the first of many marvelous biotics. She didn't seem the type to want everyone to know when she was hurting. She would have reserved that knowledge for her best friends or partner. Instead, she was stuck with me. "Anything I can do?"

"Glass of water."

When I came back from that, Miranda was holding two small, white pills in the palm of her hand and staring at them. "I'm not like him," she muttered under her breath, almost too quiet for me to hear.

I presented her with the water and she downed the pills. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Will you be okay?"

"Flare-up. One of the joys of being an L2. The medication will help."

L2. You heard stories about them. They could have migraines, crippling physical pain, insanity, or nothing at all. If I'd thought about it at all, I'd have assumed Miranda would be one of the lucky ones. She would've been only nine or ten when she'd been implanted, not much older than Claire Eldfell. I wasn't sure I want them to have anything in common. I was much happier when they could be the proverbial angel and devil. I tried to imagine her living with this for ten years or more, and I couldn't do that either. I wasn't sure whether to pity her or admire her, but I had the feeling Miranda Lawson wanted neither.

She misunderstood the look on my face. "You won't end up like this." She stared at me, and some of the pain seemed to fade from her eyes, though her voice was still hoarse from strain. "And I promise you'll get your life back. We'll leave you alone once we've learned what we need. We're not another Arcian."

If only I believed her.


	6. Interlude: Miranda and Author's Note

_Thud. Thud. Thud. _I could hear Shepard pacing in the next room. It had been unchivalrous of me, perhaps, to put him on the couch the night before such an important surgery, but I had had very little choice. Arranging proper accommodations would have been next to impossible and such a late hour, and my apartment lacked a guest room. There were those who would have said I should have taken the couch, but that would have made the pain worse in the morning, turning a moderate flare up into something that could incapacitate me for a day or more. I had to pick my battles.

If I'd been smart, I would never have lost my temper in the first place. Emotional distress was as much a trigger as caffeine and alcohol. But to hear _her_, of all people, compare me to my father? Even I had my limits. I was nothing like either of them. Shepard wasn't going to be tortured. The worst that would happen to him once he recovered was that he would get shocked when he touched metal. He got superpowers in the bargain. What teenaged boy didn't want superpowers? And he would achieve great things for all of humanity. The only reason my father turned me into a biotic was to satisfy his own ego.

_But you're still forcing him to do this against his will. And didn't your father expect great things from you? _No. We were nothing alike. Dr. Shepard had been wrong. When the L3s worked and the L2 implant and everything that went along with it was rendered obsolete, I would be vindicated.

The pain slithered through me, coursing under my skin like boiling water. Medication dulled the sensation, but never eliminated it. It was always there, a slight burn that could erupt any time I over exerted myself. Everything from sex to long days at the office had to be carefully planned. Ironic, really. My father created me to be stronger and tougher than any human had ever been. The biotics were to have been the crowning achievement. Instead, he and that doctor had hamstrung me. But that doctor's nephew might yet be my salvation.

It would help if I could get him to go to sleep. I did a quick mental calculation. I could probably get up, walk to the sitting area, and have a short conversation with Shepard without overtaxing myself anymore than I already had. The burning intensified slightly as I stood up. My steps were slow and careful, and I did my best to keep within arms length of furniture in case I needed to catch myself. It wasn't the most intimidating way to make an entrance, but he had already seen me worse. He had been terrified of me that first day, and I had vowed to use that fear the same way I would use friendliness or sex appeal. Well, I had thrown that tool away. It was time to see what else are worked.

Shepard stood by the couch. His dark auburn hair was plastered to his scalp, and he seemed paler than normal. He looked at me. Shepard always seemed to be looking at me, and never in the way I expected. I had expected to be ogled. My looks were just another thing my father gave me, and I'd expected to spend the next six months being drooled over by a horny teenage boy. But it was fascination and a bit of revulsion I saw in his gaze. I was never sure what he saw in me. I didn't like that. I was the one who was supposed to keep him on his toes, not the other way around.

"You should get some sleep." I gripped the doorframe for support.

"Can't sleep," he muttered, "too nervous."

Of course. "Nothing to be nervous about. You'll have a splitting headache for a few weeks, and then you'll be as good as new. Better than new, to be perfectly accurate."

"Are you sure about that?" Something passed across his face. Not the uncontrollable terror from yesterday, but a quiet sort of anxiety. "Nothing good has ever come from biotics. There's a woman on Eden Prime whose daughter died because of eezo exposure. My aunt crippled and Claire Eldfell to turn her into a biotic. You look like you can barely stand. So what's going to happen to me since you're getting your own shot at making a super-biotic? Why am I special?"

"Because you're that one in a million that nature and nurture have aligned for." I couldn't quite keep the bitterness from my voice. He was as powerful as I was supposed to be, but he would never be beholden to pain medication for it. My job was to make him a great biotic, but what he chose to do afterward would be up to him. He would never have to change his name and run away. And he could take credit for the gift he had in a way I never could. Why couldn't he be grateful for that? "Are we supposed to give up because there were failures? If these implants of yours do what they're supposed to, the L2s will be a thing of the past. No more migraines, insanity, or crippling pain, for anyone. If you do your part."

He laughed, but it was hollow and forced. "Heh. Sounds like you'd be a better candidate to be a guinea pig than me."

He brought me up short with that. Shepard was right. I had wanted to be the first to receive the new implants, but the Illusive Man didn't want to risk me, not until he was sure he could get what he wanted. There was some concern about the stability coming at the cost of power. Not to mention that we had no idea how they might interact with my physiology. The only person who might be able to tell us that was Dr. Shepard herself, and I would have to be on my deathbed before I asked her for help. But if the implants worked for Shepard, if he was still powerful enough to be useful, then there was a chance. "There's a lot riding on this. Don't screw it up."

"You're acting like I have a choice. Let's just hope I don't end up like Claire Eldfell."

_Yes, Shepard. For both our sakes, let's hope that you don't end up like me._

* * *

><p>I didn't go with him to the hospital. No sense in pacing the waiting room for ten hours like a worried lover, and I was afraid of what might happen if I ran into Dr. Shepard again. So my first indication of how the surgery had gone was from a message waiting for me on my computer after I finished lunch. It was from one of the surgical techs Cerberus had discreetly bribed and arranged to be assisting on Shepard's surgery. It was short, only two words:<p>

_Complete success._

Yes, maybe there was a chance after all.

* * *

><p><em>Author's note: Apologies for the brevity of this update, but consider this the end of Act 1. Thanks as always to themarshal, clennon8, and TCR. They deserve at least as much credit as me. Reviews of all stripes are appreciated.<em>

_However, I have no idea when the next chapter will be. I'm struggling with a few problems regarding where I want to take this story and the fact that Shepard/Miranda isn't my ship. As long as I could treat Matt as an OC in my head, there wasn't a problem. That is increasingly difficult to do. This story has not been forgotten about, but I'm working on other projects for the time being,  
><em>


	7. Chapter 6

_I'm back! Writer's block is gone, so I'll try to keep things moving at a steady clip. Just a reminder that this is AU, and not just in the obvious ways. There will be further changes, hopefully for the better. And now, on with the show!_

* * *

><p>The next two days were a blur. Mostly, what I remembered was pain: a dull throbbing ache at the back of my head. Doctors and nurses entered and left in a steady stream. I guessed I was doing okay because they never stayed for long. Sometimes Miranda was there watching with shrewd, penetrating eyes. Sometimes, I thought Gwen was there, holding my hand. Maybe I imagined that. I never wanted to see her again, and the painkillers make things all funny anyway.<p>

When I came to, really came to, I was alone. Asari hospital rooms weren't all that different from human ones. It was a private room, done up in pale blue and white. Didn't the asari get sick of all that blue? The window overlooked the plaza below. Yellow and black skycars zipped by like bees. It was unnerving how silent they were.

So I was a biotic now. The idea still seemed a little funny. I didn't feel any different. My head hurt but it wasn't anything like what had happened to Claire Eldfell or what I'd seen with Miranda the other night. Maybe you actually had to use biotics for them to screw you up, or maybe the new implants really were safer. I almost wish I had been in agonizing pain. It would have given me something to think about besides the fact that my whole life had been turned upside down. Miranda and her Milky Way Foundation wanted to train me. I was going to have to hide my biotics for the rest of my life. My aunt was a monster who experimented on a kid just because she could. And I was alone on a strange planet without anyone I could really trust.

I did what I always did when I was lost. I drew. Miranda and Gwen, side by side, twin banes of my existence that they were. The sketch was crude; I'd done better when I was six. This wasn't about creation. This was about power. I had no power over them in the real world. I couldn't undo what went had done to Claire Eldfell or what Miranda would do to me. But I understood this world of line, shading, and form. There were no monsters here, unless I wished them to be.

"Matt? You're awake!"

I jumped. Gwen had materialized just inside the doorway when I wasn't looking. She looked like she hadn't slept at all since the operation. Her skin was sickly gray and her eyes… She and my dad had always had the same dark, expressive eyes that seemed able to see everything about you at once. Her eyes now were flat and mostly lifeless, animated only by a desperate hysterical concern that I was convinced had to be an act.

"Get out." My voice was hoarse, and it didn't have nearly the command I needed for it to work. But I still hated her, all the more so for how sad she looked. As if regret could make up for murder. And murder was what she'd done to Claire Eldfell. This wasn't some tragic accident. She'd known what she was doing to the kid and had done it anyway. Either she was warped to begin with or operating on Claire had warped her. She was probably thrilled that my operation had gone better. I was her vindication, the super biotic she had always wanted.

She took a step closer instead. "I know what I did was horrible. I don't expect you to forgive me, not right now. But I promise you that I will never hurt you. And I promise you that I have spent every day of my life making up for what I did to that girl."

"So you can raise the dead now? Because I'm thinking anything else wouldn't cut it."

Miranda knocked on the inside of the open door. "The technology is closer than you think."

She strode toward me with a confident, assured air. Her movements were fluid, even if they were too efficient to be called graceful. Her blue-and-white suit was impeccably tailored, and strands of hair fell artfully in front of her face. There was no sign of the agony that had seized her the night before my surgery. And yet, there was something different about her. She no longer terrified me. If she could suffer pain and exhaustion, then she was as human as I was. An uncannily beautiful, terrifying human who could rat me out to the Alliance anytime she chose, but still human. I could survive that.

"I see you're looking better." She didn't look at Gwen, but I could feel the icy malice radiating off her. _Don't compare me with him,_ she'd said. Well, there was hardly a credit's worth of difference between Miranda and Robert Eldfell. They were both determined to get their biotic and "advance humanity" by trampling over individual humans. I still trusted her a little bit more than Gwen. She was honest about what she wanted to do to me. We would never be friends, and that meant she could never stab me in the back.

"Define better."

She smiled, and there was something that could almost pass for humor in her eyes. "You don't feel like your head's been split open with an ax."

"Just hit with a hammer."

"Then you're right on schedule for recovery. Your vitals are excellent. The implants are performing within specified parameters. I think it's time for you to be fitted with your amp,"

I stiffened. The first step towards being able to do something with my biotics, the first step toward being whatever it was Miranda wanted me to be. "Now?"

"No time like the present. Won't hurt a bit, I promise."

"Would you like me to come with you?" Gwen's voice was softer than I ever heard it.

"No." This time the death glare actually worked, and Gwen took a step backwards. I swung my legs off the edge of the bed and stood. My legs felt like gelatin, and a strange tingling sensation ran up and down my spine, but I was standing and that was something. Miranda watched me carefully, but didn't offer to help. I was grateful. At least she wasn't treating me like an invalid.

We walked down the hall. I took it slow and careful. Better to take my time them look like a drunk weaving down the hall. Miranda must have agreed with me because she didn't rush me and matched my pace as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Orderlies pushed carts while doctors conversed in low tones. "Just like the med center back home," I muttered.

"You were expecting differently? The pro-Council faction does love to remind us that aliens are people too. They're right. The asari are people. Brilliant and haughty. Adventurous and arrogant. Just like people. Don't be so shocked that their hospitals are the same as ours." Miranda smirked. "Of course, feel free to embellish when we get back to Eden Prime. I'm sure lots of your friends will be thrilled to hear of your off-world adventures."

My brain shut down for second. "Back—back to Eden Prime?"

"Of course. One of the reasons I'm training you is so you can stay in your familiar environment. Otherwise, we would have sent you to our Teltin Institute where you could be trained with other biotics. You didn't think we were staying in Nos Astra, did you?"

I haven't thought at all. I'd been so caught up in my rage at finding out what my aunt had done and my fear over the surgery, that the future had slipped my mind. But now it dawned on me. I was going back home to my normal life. With the only family I had left. "You can't send me back with her. You know what she did."

I didn't have to explain who _she _was. "Yes, Mr. Shepard, I know what your aunt did." Her voice was cold, and throbbed with a rage that made my hair stand on end. "If it were in my power, she would be in prison. Alas, we can't always get what we want. Bringing her to justice would mean exposing her, and Robert Eldfell would shut that investigation down faster than you could snap your fingers. And Dr. Shepard is your legal guardian."

"Don't give me that!" The tingling was stronger now, and it radiated down my spine and across my arms. "If you can drag me here, you can do something about my aunt. I'm not safe with her." I grabbed her hand, forcing her to face me. Her eyes widened in slight surprise. "You wanted me kept on Eden Prime because you thought it would be easier on me after I lost my parents? Less likely for me to go crazy, right? Well, I will go crazy if I have to share a house with her. Anywhere would be better than home."

Miranda looked down at her hand in mine. It was a soft hand, free of any calluses. She'd probably never done manual labor a day in her life. My dad would have called her soft. "Anywhere?"

"Anywhere." My nails dug into her palm. "I'd rather live with _you _than her. That ought to tell you something."

She raised an eyebrow. "I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Shepard." She went silent. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. Her eyes seemed to flicker as dozens of ideas were considered and discarded. "If you're that desperate… well, I'll pass it up the chain and see what the boss comes up with. Meanwhile, we're here." She stopped in front of a door I hadn't even noticed and ushered me inside.

The room was weird. Somebody had shoved the examining table to the far side of the room. In its place was a single chair and a full length mirror, the kind you' normally saw in old-fashioned clothing stores. It looked utterly out of place among the trays of instruments and beeping omni-tools. The scent of sterilizing solution hung heavy in the air. The only person in the room besides me and Miranda was another lab technician. She was a little older than most of them, maybe pushing the asari version of middle age. Green markings that matched her eyes covered her face in a strange pattern that reminded me of the pictures of Rorschach tests that I'd seen in the history books.

She indicated the chair. "Have a seat, Mr. Shepard."

I did, and got a good look at myself in the mirror in the bargain. I still looked like hell. Dark, purplish bruises under my eyes made me look like I'd gotten into a fight and lost. What was left of my hair looked like peach fuzz. I was glad Violet was safe on the other side of the galaxy with cousins on Earth; she'd have probably broken up with me on the spot seeing me like this.

I watched as the tech bustled around the room. After a minute, I noticed something. She never left my field of vision. By looking in the mirror, I could see what she was doing at all times. I had a sudden funny feeling in my chest, like someone had forced something hard and warm inside. "This room's normally set up a little differently, isn't it?"

She pulled something out of a drawer. "Ms. Lawson here insisted the room be set up this way. The people she works for are pretty generous supporting the medical center, or so I hear. The board gives them anything they want." She shrugged. "Money makes the world go round."

The funny feeling got a little stronger._ We will try to account for that._ My gaze flickered to where Miranda stood in the corner. Of course she would remember the day I freaked out when the tech had tried to do something and I couldn't see. Miranda never forgot anything. It was an unexpectedly thoughtful gesture, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Probably just another way to keep me from going crazy and being useless to them. Yeah, that was it.

The lab tech carried a little silver object in her hands, barely the size of my fingertips. The amp. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting. Something larger and grander, befitting of the way it was going to change my whole life. The tech moved behind me. Together the two of us filled the mirror. I inhaled. Any second now. Any second, and I'd never be normal again. I'd be able to move things with my mind. Hike up Becky's skirt like Eddie had wanted to do. It was never what I wanted to do. For half a second I considered bolting. If I ran fast and far enough, I could go back to my normal life. Miranda might be a biotic, but I was a lot bigger than she was. I could get away for a little while. Forget becoming the superman that she and her foundation wanted me to be.

_And then what?_ whispered a voice that sounded suspiciously like my older brother. _You don't think she'll find you? And even if she doesn't, the Alliance will. She was right. This is your best offer. You don't have to like her. Use her. Get her to teach you to control your biotics. Then you can go back to what's really important._

Peter always had been unnervingly practical. It hadn't saved him, any more than it had saved my parents or my little sister, Megan. I wasn't sure it would save me. But the time for running had passed. There was a pinch at the base of my skull that was over so quickly that I didn't have time to do anything more than gasp, and then the amp was installed.

The tingling I'd felt was even stronger now. It filled every inch of me. My hands vibrated. My legs vibrated. Even my teeth seemed to vibrate. Arcs of blue energy raced across my skin. A rushing noise sounded in my ears. Something like a tidal wave surged within me. The blue arcs raced faster, crisscrossing my skin like needlework. There was power here, but it was as uncontrollable as lightning.

And lightning must eventually strike. I threw up my hands and the power surged out of me. The mirror flew backwards and landed with an unceremonious _clack._ I slumped forward in my chair. All the energy had left me. I couldn't even move. I could only watch as the tech picked up the mirror. She didn't seem surprised or upset. God, did this always happen when people got amps? Why would anyone want this?

"Well, at least we don't have to worry about the L3's native power potential," Miranda muttered. She crossed the room to stand beside me. "Impressive. I only knocked over a bowl."

I looked up at her, hating how weak and helpless I felt and how much more she knew about what was happening to me that I did. "This is normal?"

She nodded. "That's why we don't just turn biotics loose. You need training. We all did. The first time that power rushes through you is like lightning. Now all we have to do is turn it into electricity."

The lab tech left, but I was still weak, and Miranda didn't seem in a hurry to leave, either. She walked over to a computer and busied herself studying readouts. Her brow was furrowed in thought. "Base force levels equivalent to my baseline. Was there any additional pain when you sent that mirror crashing to the ground?"

"No pain. Still tired, though."

"Then you're either an extraordinary outlier or the L3s are viable."

"And you can finally get your upgrade. Goodbye pain. And all you had to do was blackmail me. I guess that's considered a bargain in your line of work."

She looked at me. That curious passion was back, and this time there was no exhaustion to mar it. Her eyes shone. Her skin shone. Even her teeth seemed to shine. She was a veritable angel of light. She was beautiful. There was none of the marble statue about her now. Enthusiasm gave her vitality." You think this is about me? No, Mr. Shepard. This is about humanity. You may have very well proven that it's possible to have biotics without the pain. Imagine that! All of us able to use our power without being crippled in the process. A better life for hundreds of thousands of people. In a hundred years, the L2 implant will seem as crude as the iron lung seems to us."

She moved closer to me, close enough that I could see the blue and grey mingling in her eyes. "Your biotic strength is extraordinary, but it doesn't need to stay extraordinary. Sixty percent of all element zero exposures have no effect. Twenty percent result in fatal cancers. Twenty percent produce usable biotics. Of that twenty percent, only the tiniest fraction have readings even remotely approaching yours. If we can find out what makes you different, then we can replicate it. You're terrified of being found out because of the suffering biotics have endured. But what if that suffering was unnecessary? People would be lining up to have their children exposed. Humanity would no longer fear biotics. That is what this is about."

I listened, enthralled. Miranda's voice was low and insistent, caressing me. It was seductive in its own way. Because, for that moment, I saw what she saw. A world without Claire Eldfells or babies that died for no good reason. A world where I didn't have to hide what I was because I didn't want to join the military. And she made me believe that ridiculous fantasy. I'd thought of her as a goddess before, the sort that struck mere mortals down for not meeting her standards. But perhaps that wasn't quite the metaphor. Helen of Troy crossed with Guinevere crossed with Joan of Arc. The sort of women men had once conquered kingdoms for. I didn't want to have sex with her. Okay, I didn't _just _want to have sex with her. I wanted to fight for her, create the new order she seemed so convinced was possible.

And then, just like that, she was normal again. Worse than normal. Cold and forbidding. "So I'm not being selfish. You'll live. When this is over, you'll get to go back to your normal life. Paint. Get married. Whatever." Her voice cracked like glass. "You'll get to be _normal._ That's more than you can say for your precious Claire Eldfell."

My head spun. Passionate, thoughtful, cold and bitter by turns. I was starting to think I was never going to figure Miranda out. "No wonder you're so hard to draw."

It wasn't until she blinked and stepped back that I realized I'd spoken aloud. "You've drawn me?"

_Uh-oh_. "I draw lots of people. Sometimes I paint too." No need for her to know how obsessively I tried to capture her. "You're harder than most."

"My looks are quite striking." There was no arrogance in her voice. It was simple fact and she knew it. "I would think that would make it easier."

Looks? She thought it was about her looks? I forgot to be relieved that she wasn't upset that I'd used her as a subject. "Appearance is only a little piece of a person. I could clone you down to the last strand of DNA, but I wouldn't replicate you. When I draw or paint someone, I'm trying to show the viewer who they are, what makes them tick. And I have no clue what that is with you."

Surprise and something else flickered across her face so quickly that I might have missed it if I hadn't been looking right at her. "Down to the last strand of DNA," she repeated. Her voice sounded like it was coming through water. She straightened. "Should I be flattered that I'm a mystery to the great artist, then?"

"No." If I couldn't capture her, that was a failure on my part. A frustrating failure. It seemed wrong for Miranda to defeat me in this when she already had so much power. But seeing people was a skill just like brushwork. If I wasn't good enough to do Miranda Lawson justice, well, I could get better. "Someday, I'll get you right."

"Is that so?" A calculating glint entered her eyes, and it made me shiver. I'd given her a little more power. "Look on the bright side. The next few months will give you plenty of time to try."


	8. Chapter 7

I'd seen Gwen angry before when I almost crashed her car two weeks after arriving on Eden Prime. I'd seen her defensive when I confronted her about what she'd done to Claire Eldfell. I'd never seen her like this. She'd gone pale, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Grief, pain, and disbelief transformed her face. Suffering could be beautiful. Pain stripped away all masks and defenses and laid bare the person underneath. It was not beautiful for Gwen. She merely looked old and weak. It was, of course, my fault.

It was Miranda she rounded on, though. "You want to take my nephew away from me?"

Miranda didn't flinch. "Mr. Shepard asked me to. He feels unsafe with you."

Gwen turned to me. There was no fire in her, only sparks she was trying and failing to ignite. "What do I have to do to convince you that I'm sorry for what I did to that girl? That's why I came to the colonies, to atone. Do you have any idea how much I gave up when I left Arcian? Robert paid me almost as much as his vice presidents. I had everything I ever wanted: money, power, prestige. And I threw it away after I saw what I'd done to her."

"Yes," Miranda muttered, "and now you have one very nice car instead of three."

"Well, what do you want me to do? Wear sackcloth and ashes? The girl is dead. I can't bring her back. All I can do is go on as best I can. That includes taking care of the only family I have left."

My head hurt. "And yet, you let her give me implants. She's already done her worst to me. You haven't."

"They made me. They threatened to tell you what I'd done." I saw as the light dawned in her eyes. "And you already know." She turned to Miranda. "I don't see any reason to cooperate with your scheme anymore. I'll take Matt home, we'll have a normal life, and you and your foundation will never touch him."

Home. It was a nice word, even after everything. All I had to do was pretend what Gwen did was okay. Forget the strange and terrifying woman sitting beside me. Forget everything that had happened. Do my best never to use biotics again.

Miranda's laughter sent a shiver down my spine. "No. You won't. My employers are very interested in Mr. Shepard. And I desperately want to give you what you deserve." Her voice was low and compelling, the voice shamans had used when they told stories around the tribal campfire long ago. "Your idea of atonement is taking a pay cut and accepting guardianship of a boy you saw once before your brother died. My idea is stripping you of that license. I assure you I can find some pretext or other. You'd never practice medicine again. And you have precious few other skills. You'd be poor. Have you ever been poor, doctor? Not just a struggling resident. Desperate. Wondering if your dignity is worth your next hot meal. You don't have the strength to handle something like that. I know women like you. You say you love your nephew, and maybe you do, but you'll choose comfort every time."

"How dare you presume—"

"I'm not presuming anything. Shepard's known what you've done for weeks, and you let him stay here. You let me be alone with him." She leaned in close. "You did that because you know how much power I wield. You're a coward."

I looked between them. Miranda's glittering eyes and pale face versus Gwen's ashen skin. Death and Life. And I saw Gwen flinch. "You'd do it," I whispered. "That license does matter more."

"Not the license. Survival, for both of us. I'd be letting you starve too."

I couldn't say anything. There was a hard, burning lump in my throat. I'd known she was sick, or weak or whatever you wanted to call it, but it was different seeing it stated so bluntly. She'd said she'd never hurt me, but she'd sell me out just like she sold out Claire Eldfell. Anything to survive.

"But, tell me who's worse, the blackmailed or the blackmailer? I may be weak, but I love my nephew. He's just a tool to you."

"So, those are my choices?" I could feel power surging through me. "At least I know I'm a tool with her."

"And tools are discarded once they're no longer needed."

Miranda's face grew hard. It was more than ice. Disgust filled every inch of her. "You sound just like him. Well, I'm not—not Robert Eldfell. I don't pretend any personal fondness for your nephew. But he is extraordinarily important. The key to what you wanted when you operated on Claire: consistent results from element zero exposure. The retirement of the L2 implant. I'll treat him with care. And then, I'll let him go back to his life instead of putting him down like a dog."

"_Now _you sound like Robert. I'm sure he thought Claire was the most valuable thing in the world when he hired me." Gwen's gaze was triumphant. "And now I'm going back to the hotel." She looked at me and her voice softened. "Goodnight, Matt."

Miranda watched her go. I saw a faint, almost imperceptible blue light swirl around her. Her muscles trembled with tension. "I'm not the least bit like him." Every syllable was as hard and crisp as new-fallen snow.

I looked at her. My aunt couldn't or wouldn't protect me, so that meant I was on my own against the woman with so many facets that I couldn't figure her out. I knew only a few things about her: she was passionate about improving human biotics. She had problems with chronic pain relating to L2 implants. Twice she'd been compared to Robert Eldfell and I'd seen her angry. Not just angry. Furious. And I didn't know the why of any of it.

Miranda took a deep breath, and the sparks of energy flickered and died. I raised an eyebrow. "How did you do that? I thought biotics had to be used once you started glowing like that."

"They do. I can just control myself a bit better than most." She cocked her head to one side. "Though a little stress release might do us both some good. Come on."

I followed her because I didn't know what else to do. The hallway was nearly deserted at this hour. I could see the tension swirl around Miranda as we walked. Her jaw was clenched, and her lips were set in a thin line. She didn't speak, and the only sounds were that of her harsh breathing and that of our shoes as they clattered on the floor. She stopped in front of a door marked "Therapy Room." A red light indicated it was locked, but Miranda tapped a few buttons on the keypad and the door swung open. I started to ask her if she thought she owned the place, but then I remembered all the money that the foundation was throwing at the hospital. She practically did own the place.

The room stank of an unholy mix of sweat and air freshener. Mats like I'd seen at gymnastics competitions lined one wall. In the center of the room was a set of parallel bars. Scattered around the room were rubber balls of various colors and sizes. Some were no bigger than tennis balls. Others were large enough to sit on.

Miranda grabbed the smallest of the balls and tossed it from hand to hand "Time for your first lesson, Mr. Shepard. Would you rather hit or be hit?"

Had Miranda just said what I thought she said? "Excuse me?"

"Broadly speaking, all biotic forces can be divided into three groups. You can use them to move things. Telekinesis. You can use that energy to create kinetic barriers that protect you or hold objects or people in place. Or, biotics can be used to shred the objects on a molecular level. The last is fairly advanced, so we'll leave that for later. But the first two…" She threw the ball up in the air and caught it. "Either I'm going to throw this ball at you and you're going to stop me, or you're going to throw it at me using nothing but biotics."

_Hit her._ It would be nice to take just a little bit of revenge on her. Gwen was right. I was nothing more than a tool for her to use. Well, I couldn't stop her from using me, but I could hit her. The little ball couldn't really hurt her, but it would've stung just a little. A little raw aggression, the stress release she'd offered.

And then I remembered the day I met her. She'd taunted me with my inability to save my family. I'd lashed out at her with everything I had. The effort had left me coughing blood, but the kinetic field she'd called up meant that I hadn't so much as knocked a hair out of place. Anything I threw at her would just bounce right off. It didn't go the other way around, though. Not yet. Before I could even think of how to get a little petty revenge, I needed to learn how to keep her from hurting me.

"Toss it at me."

I saw surprise flicker across her face the briefest of moments. I could throw her off balance a little, too. Good. "Interesting choice. Not showy, but practical. Don't believe what they tell you. The best defense isn't a good offense. It's a good defense. The trick to conscious control of your biotics is training the correct nerve impulses to fire at the same time. To do that, you'll use certain muscle movements or gestures. For something like a defensive barrier, we want to work with natural instincts. Do you follow?"

My head was hurting again. "Not a word of it."

A muscle worked in her jaw, and she seemed to be trying very hard not to roll her eyes at me. "I'll demonstrate. Watch closely. And since I know you were dying to do this anyway…" She threw the ball to me. "I want you to throw this at me as hard as you can. Put some of that time in Little League on Mindoir to good use."

"How did you know I was—never mind." I wound up and threw the ball straight at her heart. She threw up her left arm and was enveloped in blue light. The ball bounced harmlessly off the force field. Miranda dismissed it with a flick of her wrist and picked the ball off the floor. "Your turn. Concentrate. Imagine something being thrown at you. What would you do?"

I threw up my arms in front of me like I did when Peter had decided to give me impromptu "boxing" lessons when we were kids. I felt a small surge of energy running through me. "This?"

She frowned. "You felt that little spark. Use it. Imagine it getting bigger and bigger. Let it cover your whole body."

I concentrated. Nothing happened. I tensed every muscle in my body. Still nothing.

"Focus," Miranda said.

"I'm focusing!"

"Clearly not enough. I'd almost think you were—" And then, without warning, she threw the ball straight from my head. I didn't even have time to think, just react. I threw my arms up to protect myself. I could feel the biotics working again, a little harder. There was even a little bit of light. It wasn't enough, and the ball clipped me on the side of the head.

"What the hell did you do that for?" I rubbed my temple with one hand while fantasizing about throwing balls of my own at her. Cannonballs. Big, heavy cannonballs.

"Got your adrenaline going. It increases biotic strength for most people." She smirked. "Including you. Now, again."

And that was how I spent the next half hour being pelted by a rubber ball normally used to improve hand eye coordination for small children. I did everything I could think of, but there was never anything more than a faint blue light surrounding me. Sweat poured down my face, and I could feel the beginnings of a bruise on my forearm. Miranda never raised her voice, but her consonants grew more and more precise as time went on. And still, we kept at it. She was persistent, I'll give her that, barking out commands as if this time the way she said "Pay attention, Mr. Shepard" would make a difference.

The rubber ball sailed through the air for the fiftieth or five hundredth time. This time I caught it in my hands. "That's enough. I'm not going to get it no matter how many bruises you give me, and I'm tired."

She glared at me. "I've seen what you can do, Mr. Shepard. I settle for nothing but the best. This is not your best. If you ever want to be a decent biotic—"

"I don't want to be a decent biotic, remember? That's what you want." I wiped the sweat from my forehead, too exhausted for real fury. "You're using me. How enthusiastic do you expect me to be about all this? If you're depending on slave labor, you can't expect top-quality work."

Miranda blinked and took a step back. "Slave labor? Is that how you see this?" I saw dozens of emotions in her face. The one that stood out to me the most was realization. I could see the exact moment she understood that I didn't want this. "I can't just let you go. There's too much riding on this. And you're a danger to yourself and everyone else right now. But I'm not him. I can make this better for you than it was—what would motivate you, I wonder?"

_Passion_, I wanted to say. _Whatever it is they gets into you when you talk about creating safe biotics. _It was a fantasy she sold, the way you would expect her to sell a sexual fantasy. I'd seen and heard too much of the suffering biotics had caused to believe that her utopia was possible. When she spoke of making her implants obsolete and seeing that no more children died from element zero exposure, she became someone else. I wanted to believe that woman she became. I would have done anything for her. But she wasn't here now.

The wheels turned in Miranda's head. "You want to be an artist, Mr. Shepard. I assume you're planning to take commissions. Using what I'm told is considerable talent and energy in the service of another's desires. Think of this as some hideous dog on velvet painting you're being paid a fortune for."

"Wait, are you offering to _pay_ me to receive biotic training?"

"Not with money. You can get credits anywhere, and I doubt I could afford you. But I can offer you something much more valuable." Her voice dropped an octave. It wormed its way inside my head and caressed me like silk. The voice promised me things I could never say out loud even to myself. "You say you don't know me? That I'm hard to draw or paint or whatever because I'm a myster?. Well, I can offer you the chance to figure me out. For every skill you master, I'll answer any one question you ask me."

Something inside me jolted. I could have turned down money. In the colonies, you got used to not having any. If Miranda had offered sex, I could have managed to turn her down. There were other, less terrifying, beautiful woman in the galaxy. But truth? Truth was my stock in trade. It was my job to take pencils and paper or oil and canvas and use those tools to distill a subject down to its essence, to strip away all masks. I showed people the truth of what my subjects were. And here Miranda was offering me the truth about herself. I had so many questions.

"Ah, I thought that might interest you. So, do we have a deal?"

I nodded. For the chance to solve the puzzle that was Miranda Lawson, I'd play along for now. She smiled, and made a show of winding up to throw the ball. This time I would be ready for her. I took a deep breath and raised one hand, palm up. I saw the ball arcing toward me. _Don't hit me. I won't let you hit me._ Power surged through me like a waterfall. But waterfalls had been used to power electrical plants once upon a time. I imagined a wall encircling me. The energy surged through my body as blue light shimmered around me.

I felt the impact, but it was different this time. The difference between falling on rocky ground and soft grass. The ball grazed my cheek and tickled like a feather before falling harmlessly at my feet. The energy died, and my limbs were suddenly heavy with exhaustion.

Miranda looked at the ball and then at me. For a moment, there was only disbelief. Then she smiled. It wasn't the small, slightly ironic smile that I was used to, tinged with faint cruelty. It wasn't the rapturous ecstasy of idealism. It was warm. Human. I didn't see a living statue or a goddess. There was only a woman a few years older than me. Men wouldn't have fought wars over the woman I saw in that moment. They simply would have loved her. "That," Miranda said, "was your best. And I am a woman of my word. So, what would you like to know?"

I'd love to say that I thought the question over long and hard. I didn't. But after everything I'd seen and heard since Miranda walked into my life—everything I'd seen and heard today—there was only one question I could ask. "Why do you hate my aunt so much?"

Her smile hardened. "Would you believe that it's because I despise unethical scientists? It wouldn't be that far from the truth."

"I think I've earned the whole truth, don't you?"

"Maybe three quarters." The smile faded and she pulled something out of her pocket. I recognized it as the bottle I'd gotten for her that night in her apartment. "This is Andrex, a morphinomimetic prescribed to people who suffer from moderate to severe chronic pain. Claire Eldfell took this medication before her death. It dulls the pain, but it dulls everything else too. Your mind feels like it's been swaddled in cotton. Other side effects include itching and constipation. As time goes on, patients have to take more and more as the body develops tolerance. And the pain never entirely goes away. The best you can hope for is to be functional. That's the life people like me have to lead. That's the life your aunt inflicted on Claire Eldfell." She looked at me, and her gaze was like the blast of a cold wind. "Does that answer your question?"

"Yes."

Neither of us said anything else that night.

* * *

><p><em>I've done my research into chronic pain, and I have a disability of my own, but I'm still fundamentally an outsider writing about a condition I don't have. Please let me know if I get anything wrong.<em>


	9. Chapter 8

_One of the nice things about writing for the internet is the ability to fix your mistakes. Matt's living situation was the cause of my original hiatus. My original solution was __contrived. This should be much better. Camberwell College of the Arts does exist by the way, one on six colleges comprising the University of the Arts, London._

* * *

><p>Miranda rapped sharply on the room door. I put my book to one side. "What is it, Miranda?"<p>

She opened the door. Her lips were pursed in a slight frown, but her movements were graceful and her eyes were bright and alert. 'How did you know it was me?"

"You have a very distinctive knock." Brief, firm and to the point. It made me snap to attention every time I heard it.

She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "Perceptive, aren't you?"

I inclined my head toward the sketchbook and pencils. "It'd be weird if I wasn't."

"I suppose." She settled in the chair opposite me, close enough that the scent of jasmine assaulted my nose like a too-enthusiastic uncle at Christmas dinner. She looked at me, her gaze probing and assessing. I stared back at her. It was still uncanny when she looked at me like that, but I wouldn't let myself flinch. "You're being discharged tomorrow."

Discharged. There were nights that word kept me up at night. Discharged to where? I couldn't stay here in Nos Astra, apparently, and I couldn't go back to Eden Prime with Gwen. And for all Miranda's insistence that she'd take up the subject with her bosses, she'd been remarkably quiet about it until now. "And what happens after that?"

"That depends entirely on you. I think we've come up with a solution, but I wanted your input before we moved forward. Are you familiar with the Irene C. Denmark Scholarship?"

I shook my head.

"Well, Mrs. Denmark is apparently quite horrified at the number of human children who are growing up outside Earth, and are 'in danger of losing their cultural heritage.'" Miranda wrinkled her nose. "It's thinly-veiled xenophobic claptrap, but it's useful to us. She funds a scholarship allowing human high school students born off-world to study on Earth for a year." Miranda smiled triumphantly. "Mr. Shepherd, how would you like to study abroad? Say, London?"

I stiffened. _She can't know, can she?_ "London?" I squeaked.

"Yes, London. We've found a host family that might suit you. A Donald and Isabella Montague. He's a retired mercenary turned Cord-Hislop middle manager and she's a professor at some college or other. Casterwell, Camberly, something like that."

"Camberwell. Camberwell College of the Arts. It's part of the University of the Arts." Tension thrummed through me like I'd been hit with tuning fork. "I thought about applying there before…well I figured it didn't matter anymore. I'm still kind of shocked you want me to go to school. And living with a professor!"

"I told you: I want to make this bearable for you." The compelling note was back in her voice, and I leaned forward in my chair as if pulled by a string. "If I locked you up and trained you twenty-four hours a day, I might have a technically more powerful biotic, but I'd also have a useless one. I want proof that biotics can be functional and productive members of society. Turning you into a living weapon proves neither."

"Tell me, what does estranging a troubled young man from the last of his family prove?" Gwen's voice was like a knife. Her grip on the doorframe turned her knuckles white. "I don't know how you did it, but you've brainwashed my nephew. It's you he should hate, not me, but you've got him eating out of your hand."

I didn't say anything. She was right. Even I couldn't fully explain why I didn't hate Miranda. Maybe the revelation that she had good qualities still kept me off balance. Or maybe it was just that she couldn't betray me.

"Think of this as an opportunity, doctor. Your nephew is going to be living within walking distance of a university he's considering attending. You get to go back to practicing neurology, or atoning, or whatever you're calling it these days. Everyone's happy."

"Except me. I'll find a way to get Matt back."

Miranda glared at her, as icy and intense as the day we'd met. The Snow Queen, come to life. I could almost see the frost on her hair. "For your own sake, doctor, I suggest you go along with this plan. You don't have the resources to contend with my employers. You'd lose far more than your nephew if you tried."

"No." Gwen's voice was flat and dead. "But someone can." And with that, she left." No last appeals for goodbyes. I guess she really did think that I was brainwashed.

I watched her go. Now I was alone, no family to speak of and my only ally a woman who made threats I normally associated with crime syndicates. "How much power does the Milky Way Foundation have, exactly?"

She smiled a knowing, conspiratorial smile. "As much as any other well-funded organization with the right contacts. The sad truth is that you can get away with anything as long as you're rich and powerful enough. For now, that works in my favor."

"Like it works for Robert Eldfell." A thought struck me like lightning. "You don't think my aunt would go back to him to get him to help her? Or blackmail him?"

Miranda laughed. It was a weird sound, neither humorous nor hysterical, but something else altogether. "He'd crush her if she tried. Eldfell isn't blackmailed. He makes deals. Your aunt has nothing to offer him anymore. The last of the daughters is beyond his reach. There's no one left for her to operate on."

"Beyond his reach. That's one way to put—did you say 'last of the daughters?' There's more than one?"

Miranda flinched. "Entirely too perceptive." I couldn't tell whether it was a compliment or an insult. "Yes, there was more than one. Three, as a matter of fact. Claire was simply the only one who survived into adolescence."

A different kind of tension filled me, the kind you get when you're watching a horror vid and the villain's about to kill the heroine's girlfriend. You want to look away, but you can't. "I looked him up. That's how I found out about my aunt. There's no mention of any daughters. What happened to them?"

"They never officially existed." Miranda's voice was icy again, but there was something brittle about it, as if it might shatter if someone applied the right pressure.

I pressed. "But you'd think a guy like that would want the world to know he had kids."

"Not if they were genetic defectives. Eldfell made his money in helium-3, but genetics is his passion. They were an…embarrassment, shall we say? Spina bifida and Down's Syndrome, respectively. He institutionalized them and never bothered about them again as far as I know. They died years ago."

I tried to imagine disowning my kid because they were disabled. I couldn't quite do it. I tried to imagine finally having a healthy kid and deliberately screwing it up because I was dead set on a biotic. I couldn't do that either.

"You know a lot about this, don't you?" Something clicked in my brain. Gwen and Miranda had the same Australian accents. Monied accents. Miranda had thrown all that luxury at us, but barely seemed to notice it herself. She said she hated my aunt because of the pain, but there was something personal about it. "You—you know them don't you? The Eldfells?"

Miranda didn't speak for a long time. "When you can produce a singularity, I might consider answering that question."

I decided to take that as a yes. All the secrets of the dead girl who had captured my imagination held by the living woman who enthralled and terrified me. It was almost too good to be true. Oh yes, I was going to be the best biotic ever.

Miranda shook her head. "That's neither here nor there now." Her voice was brisk "The important thing is the scholarship. You don't mind leaving your home again? Earth will be something of an adjustment."

"Home? Home has people who give two shits about you. I haven't had that for six months." Earth was strange, but Eden Prime had been strange, too. At least complete strangers couldn't hurt me.

Miranda softened. I expected to find pity in her gaze, but found something else. Recognition and grief, as if she knew what I meant. It seemed stupid to think so. Someone as beautiful and compelling as she was shouldn't know that kind of loneliness. And yet, it happened. The young and beautiful queen who cut herself off from all human contact to be a good ruler was right up there with the young and beautiful dead girl in terms of popular subjects of paintings. Was that what Miranda was?

I wondered what I'd have to do to get an answer to that question.

* * *

><p>The passenger liner that took Miranda and me to Earth was even nicer than the one that had taken me to Nos Astra. It had been modeled on the great ships that had performed transatlantic crossings in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The <em>Mercator <em>was a hotel that just happened to be able to jump through mass relays. The spaceport was a din of voices as cargo and people were loaded aboard. Miranda stood beside me close enough that I could feel the heat of her but not quite close enough for physical contact. She was as impeccably dressed as ever in slim and elegant black. The material did absolutely nothing to hide her curves or the lean muscle beneath. The boots, the jacket, everything seemed to be calculated to both attract and intimidate. I caught a bunch of the guys and a few of the girls casting sidelong glances in her direction. Miranda returned all their gazes coolly, accepting her due but not impressed or interested in reciprocating.

I looked, too. Miranda was neither terrifying nor captivating at the moment, just another extremely beautiful woman. I'd always liked girls, but I tried to be nice about it. Nobody liked being treated like a piece of meat. So I kept my ogling to myself unless I was with Violet. Even then, I tried not to do anything that would make her punch me. Trickier than it sounds when you're in high school. Ever since the raid I tried to treasure each spike of lust. It reminded me that I was still alive. The batarians hadn't been able to take everything from me. If it was a little fainter than before, well at least I could still react. The embarrassing dreams and other stuff would come in time. They had to. So, yeah, I looked.

Miranda caught my eye. "Planning to draw me again?"

I blushed, but I didn't look away.

I kept one hand on my suitcase as we moved through the great mass of people. The crowd seemed to part before Miranda almost by instinct. I tried not to gawk too much. For all the luxury I'd seen in Nos Astra I still wasn't used to being surrounded by people in designer suits or by so many aliens. Salarians chatted in hurried, hushed tones. An asari laughed at some private joke. A hanar, its tentacles hovering slightly above the ground, glided along the walkway, followed by a female drell. The humans were scarcely less exotic. People with chauffeurs might as well have been a separate species. I tried to remember that this used to be Gwen's world. It was still Miranda's.

"Different from the colonies, isn't it?" She smiled at me. "Earth is even more crowded, though obviously more homogenous."

"I'm still trying to figure out how we're affording this."

She chuckled. "I have an expense account, a terrible weakness for the finer things in life, and a young man to impress. It wasn't that hard to justify."

Our suite was on the upper deck: two connecting rooms and a small sitting room barely larger than your average walk-in closet. My shoes clattered on the metal floor. The sheets looked delightfully soft and warm. Still silk, but at least there were no golden staircases. I tossed the suitcase onto the bed.

Miranda watched me. "Need any help unpacking?" The surprise must've shown on my face because she added, "What? I can be helpful when I choose."

"No thanks. I can unpack one lousy suitcase." I proceeded to do just that. Most of my stuff was either in the cargo hold or had been shipped to Earth separately. I'd carried only the essentials: enough clothes for the two-day trip, a toothbrush, and my sketchbook. You always heard horror stories about the fate of luggage during galactic travel, and I wasn't about to trust my art of all things to it.

I turned from putting my shirt in the drawer to find Miranda staring at my unopened sketchbook. "Do you carry that thing everywhere?"

I shrugged. "You never know where or when inspiration will strike. I'm actually better with oils, but that takes space and prep time I really haven't had lately."

"So the drawings are what? Just killing time until you can return to your first love?"

Irritation prickled over my skin. I knew one thing about Miranda now: she wasn't an artist. "It's not like that. Every medium has its strengths and weaknesses. Paintings are good when I have a subject that can fill the canvas. The colors are deeper, richer. It's for the grand, epic stuff. The drawings are for something more human-scale. And for when I don't have time or space to prep the canvas."

"Human-scale. Portraits of me, you said. I wonder what I look like to you?"

"Nothing worth seeing. I can't get you right, remember?" And somehow I doubted Miranda would appreciate my renderings of her as a living statue. "I'm probably doing a better job with Claire Eldfell, and I've never even seen a picture of her." Another thought, riskier this time. "Could you tell me how close I am with her?" There was always the risk that Miranda would savage my work, but I was convinced that she had known the family somehow even if she was being evasive. That made her as close to a primary source as I was ever going to get.

Amusement sparkled in her eyes. "Why not?" She sat on the bed. I joined her, again close but never quite close enough to touch. I flipped through the sketchbook, careful not to let her see anything I'd done of her. This sketch I chose had been done just after Gwen and I had arrived in Nos Astra. I'd been full of anxiety, and the sketch reflected that. Claire, blonde hair spilling around her shoulders like a halo, sat at the window, looking down as a group of teenagers played baseball in the park below. Pain and grief made the girl old before her time. She watched the baseball game even though she didn't really want to. It was a reminder of everything her father and my aunt had taken from her. Everything I thought Miranda was going to take from me.

Miranda looked. The muscles in her face froze one by one until she once again reminded me of a living statue. I tensed. She was about tell me that Claire's nose was too big or she was actually a redhead or…

"This is horrible," she spat out, each word like an icicle. "The poor little cripple who can only watch as the rest of the world has fun. God, couldn't you have had her doing something?"

I bristled. How _dare_ this woman who didn't even know why I would work with both pencils and oils critique my subject? The only thing I wanted from her was to know whether I got the details right. "She was sick. I've seen you on a bad day, and I'm sure she was worse. She died from it! I'm trying to show how cruel what her father did to her was."

Miranda glared at me. Even the sliver of malice was enough to make me cringe a little. "Yes, it was cruel. Yes, she spent a great deal of her life in pain. Yes, she died in the end. But it didn't define her. You've drawn a victim, not a sixteen-year-old girl."

"She was a victim!"

"No, she wasn't." Spots of color appeared on Miranda's cheeks. "Victims are defined by what happened to them. Claire Eldfell was a person with hobbies and flaws. That pain you mythologize so much was not the whole of her life, any more than my condition is the whole of mine. You don't think of me as a victim, do you?"

I remembered the way she'd threatened Gwen with her biotics. Miranda Lawson was nobody's victim. The very idea was preposterous. I shook my head.

"Then give her the same courtesy. She was the daughter of a wealthy man who saw her as the chance to create his dynasty." Her voice sounded very far away. "Imagine someone with every physical and intellectual gift Eldfell and Arcian could bestow. Now, add being the daughter of the wealthiest man in the galaxy and all the doors that would open for her." Her lips thinned. "Her biotic power rivaled that of an asari. Lastly, imagine having all that and knowing you could still be locked away if one man decided you weren't making the best possible use of it."

She straightened. "Get all that right, and then you can worry about the details of her appearance."


	10. Counterpoint I

_Matt_

I shouldn't have cared what Miranda thought. Real critics evaluated the execution of a piece, not the subject. Miranda could no more criticize me for rendering Claire as a passive sufferer than she could me painting daisies instead of petunias. It was a perfectly valid artistic choice. Had I conveyed what I set out to convey? Miranda couldn't answer that. She didn't have the tools, so she criticized what I had drawn instead.

And yet, her words would not leave me._ Imagine someone with every physical and intellectual gift Eldfell and Arcian could bestow. Now, add being the daughter of the wealthiest man in the galaxy and all the doors that would open for her._ I'd never been around people with money before Miranda showed up, unless you counted Gwen, who didn't exactly flaunt it. But Claire Eldfell had had money. She'd never have to make do with pencils that came in tins the size of lunchboxes, five credits for the lot, whose colors were too harsh for what she wanted. She'd never have to hope and pray she was good enough for a scholarship. Her family was the sort that hobnobbed with ambassadors and kings.

That was only the beginning of her privilege. Having every physical and intellectual gift was an exaggeration—no one was that perfect—but it was an exaggeration I could run with. She would be beautiful, but how? Not in the sweet, angelic way designed to arouse only pity that I had first chosen. Claire had been a crippled, suffering princess, but still a princess: the long hoped for heiress to an empire. Her beauty would have been calculated to command, something to bend men and women alike to her will. Eldfell's dark hair and cold eyes put into a woman's body and made beautiful. She would be strong, tough enough to survive a procedure meant for krogan.

There would be an intellect too, keen and fiercely honed. _Lastly, imagine having all that and knowing you could still be locked away if one man decided you weren't making the best possible use of it._ Claire would have been cunning. She would have had no other choice. If she didn't learn her father's moods and what did and didn't please him, she would be thrown into a nursing home. And she knew it. My modern princess, locked away in her tower. It would have made her old before her time, suspicious and haunted. All that privilege hanging by a gossamer thread. She would have learned to manipulate the way other children learned their ABCs, because that was what would maintain her comfort for another day.

Arrogance and terror would be her twin companions. The suffering would still be there, but it would be there as it was for Miranda, part of the whole. That would be a challenge to render, far more than the golden-haired martyr I had first conjured. That Claire had been pathetic. This new Claire would be tragic: the best of humanity slowly succumbing to one man's arrogance and her own determination to escape the fate he planned for her. This Claire would have literally worked herself to death trying to meet her father's expectations. And she would have been proud and alone to the end, afraid to confide in anyone in case her father smelled weakness.

Perhaps that would please Miranda more. There were bits of her in Claire now, but then they had the pain and the money in common, didn't they?

The image came to me as suddenly as lightning and as sharp as a photograph. Claire Eldfell, in fencer's gear, mask off. Her shoulders drooped with exhaustion, but her jaw was set with fierce determination. She would get through this lesson even if it killed her. A fencing master stood opposite her, expression unreadable behind his mask. His sword lay on a nearby bench, one hand extended toward the girl, but his head turned toward the third figure in the room. His loyalties were divided between his student and the man paying his fee. He knew he should stop, but he dared not. Robert Eldfell stood between and a little behind them, coldly and impassively assessing his daughter's performance. A study in stubbornness, weakness, and malice.

This was no sketch. Such detail could only be properly shown on canvas. I'd need time and space I didn't have at present. But I'd have it soon, thanks to Miranda. Professor Montague would have studio space in her house. If I were a really good boy, she might even let me use some of her supplies. Professional grade paint to go with the professional grade pencils Miranda and her foundation had given me. And there would be research to do. I'd seen fencing once or twice in vids, the hobby of bored aristocrats with names like Smythe-Wessen and von Richten. It would be easy to base the painting on nothing more than those vids. Claire, though, deserved accuracy, as she deserved every ounce of skill and effort I possessed.

Miranda knocked and entered. "I forgot to tell you that dinner's in an hour. You can order up some room service if you don't feel like dealing with the crowd."

I waved her away. No I didn't feel like being with a bunch of people. There was a painting to plan. They would only disrupt my concentration. Actually… I looked at Miranda. She was the sort of person who would hang around with people who fenced. Maybe she even fenced herself. I might be able to get a bit of information from her or at least the concession that it was a good idea for a painting. "Maybe you could join me for dinner?"

Miranda stiffened. Not like she had before, with anger and irritation transforming her into cold marble. This was more like what happened when the rabbits we kept on Mindoir caught sight of the local predators. They went very still and hoped they would go away. Subtle patches of color appeared on her cheeks. "I don't think that would be appropriate."

"Appropriate?" What could be inappropriate about—oh. _Oh._ I felt my own cheeks grow hot. It'd been so long since I felt like asking a girl out that way that the idea hadn't even crossed my mind. "I didn't mean it like that. I just have something I want to talk over with you." I closed my eyes. I wish I had meant it like that. A normal guy would have. Miranda had been unsettling at first, but I had seen her in the throes of enthusiasm. She was beautiful. I should have been dying to tear her clothes off instead of feeling vague, muted attraction and being grateful that I felt that much.

I forced a smile. "Your honor is entirely safe with me, milady."

A shadow passed over her face for no reason I could think of, but she smiled in return all the same. "I'll see you in an hour then."

_Miranda_

_I wish I had meant it like that_. Shepard's voice had been barely above a whisper. He probably hadn't even realized he'd spoken aloud. But I'd heard him. Worse, I understood him. His dossier spoke of posttraumatic stress disorder or depression. Decreased sexual appetite would not be uncommon. I knew what that was like. I wasn't celibate—one of the first things I'd done after joining Cerberus was rid myself of my unwanted virginity—but the pain was a complication. At its worst, it robbed me of desire altogether, and Andrex could smother it with a cloud of opiates. And there were the long chats about expectations, what I could and couldn't do, and various other things that could suck the passion right out of an encounter unless I chose my partner carefully. I knew what it was to lust after someone, but I also knew what it was to want to lust after them and be physically unable to do so. Strange to have that in common with a teenage boy.

The pain was no more than a mild burn that day, so I spent most of the hour writing a report for our Teltin Institute. I'd meant what I'd told Shepard. The L3 implant and his subsequent training would help far more people than just me. BAaT had had limited success in creating powerful, useful biotics, but we were still nowhere near the asari, or even the salarians. Teltin was our chance to remedy that. Many children had been cast out by their families after manifesting biotic ability. We took them in, and provided cutting-edge training that would make them useful to humanity. Shepard could be the breakthrough we had been looking for.

Shepard arrived exactly one hour later, sketchbook under one arm. He looked… different. I don't mean a cliché sudden attractiveness. Misery had swirled around him since the day we met, but he seemed to have sloughed some of it off. He moved more briskly and his smile was nervous instead of infused with false charm. Even the nervousness was different. There was no terror in his eyes, as there had been when I mentioned biotics, just the ordinary sort of anxiety mixed with a subdued excitement. It must've been caused by whatever he wanted to discuss with me.

"Have a seat." I tossed him a datapad containing a menu.

The color left his face. "Fifty credits for smoked salmon?"

"Expense account," I reminded him. "You can have whatever you like." He'd see me weak far sooner than I would have liked, so the luxury had been my backup plan. Niket had been overawed by the slightest bauble that my father had deigned to give me. Shepard hid it a little better, but he didn't know what to make of all this luxury I took for granted. That and his curious fascination with me were the only tools I had now that I could no longer terrify him into compliance. Fortunately, he was proving far more susceptible to bribery than he ever had terror. "Now, what was it you wanted to discuss?"

He put the menu down. "I, er, got to thinking about what you said about me turning Claire Eldfell into a victim."

Good. Let him think. I wasn't some pathetic cripple, fit only to be pitied for what I couldn't do. I'd survived. Soon, I would do better than survive. And, even at my worst I'd had Niket and Nielsen. I hadn't simply gazed pitifully out a window as life passed me by.

"You had no right to criticize how I chose to represent her, but you gave me an idea. You wanted Claire active?" He picked up his sketchbook. "Well, how's this?"

He flipped through the pages furiously until he came to a sketch in colored pencil. It lacked the polished quality of the one I'd seen earlier, and the pencil strokes seemed frantic, as if they'd been done in a great hurry. A female fencer stood in what was clearly supposed to be the en garde position, her foil sticking outward. Her foot positioning was all wrong, and both hands were gauntleted instead of just the sword hand.

And yet, it was me that I saw in that scribbling. Oh, the girl's features were different, much softer than mine. I preferred the quicker, more realistic feel of the épée to the more mannered foil. This girl was as much an invention as the blonde saint that had so infuriated me. But I recognized her in the hunch of her shoulders and the set of her jaw. Not me, but me as I might have been. "Better," I managed.

His eyes shone with satisfaction. "Good. Because this is just the proof-of-concept." His face lit up as he spun me a tale of an exhausted girl fatally determined to succeed, the fencing master too weak to help her and the forbidding father who controlled them both. How her skin would be as pale as a nineteenth-century consumptive, beautiful but clearly unhealthy. How the father would appear impassive on first viewing, but gradually revealed a subtle cruelty as he looked for any excuse to shut his daughter away forever. Maybe the fencing master loved her—he hadn't decided yet.

Gregory had been happily married and not that close to me in any case, but that almost seemed beside the point as Shepard's words tumbled out like a waterfall. I could see hints of what he must've been before Mindoir, this boy who used colors and lines to tell stories the way other people used words. Reserved by nature, perhaps, and twisted into something else by circumstance, but passionate about what he loved. If the real me could ever command even a fraction of the passion he showered on his paints and the construct he had created, then…

"I was hoping you knew someone who fenced." He put his hand over mine, as if I were a girlfriend he was hoping to convince to run away with him. I looked down at them. His fingers were a study in contrasts, long and tapering and perfect for holding pencils or paintbrushes, but calloused from years of helping out on the family homestead. The artist and the farmboy all wrapped up in a neat little package.

"I don't even know what I don't know," he continued, "and I thought maybe you could help me out." He squeezed my fingers. "Please?"

That desperate, pleading intensity intrigued me. More than intrigued me. He had said he wanted to capture me the way he was painting his spectre of Claire Eldfell. What would it be like to be the object of that intense scrutiny? Terrifying as he peeled me back layer by layer, or exhilarating as he found something that my father couldn't claim credit for? And perhaps the intensity could be expanded to other things. His biotics. That would be helpful. Or some girl he loved. If he were older or less traumatized, he would've been exactly the sort of man I would have seduced for my own sake. See what I could make of his attention to detail. He wasn't even bad looking, with his auburn hair and ice blue eyes. Perhaps all he needed to turn back into himself was a little encouragement. I could provide that. I'd been designed to provide it.

No, wait. Best to stop that particular train of thought right now. He was a traumatized sixteen-year-old boy, like it or not. I'd do everything in my power to turn him into a good biotic. I'd manipulate him in every way possible for the benefit of humanity. But not for something as selfish as taking him to my bed. I'd be taking advantage of him, and even my father hadn't sunk quite that low.

The idea was locked away like an inconvenient surge of biotic power. I wouldn't think about it again. If I found myself needing relief that badly, well there were people who knew my needs and would expect very little in return.

"So, what do you say?"

I ought to have said no, spared myself even the temptation of seeing him like this again. His art should have been nothing more than something I could use to manipulate him into becoming what I needed. And yet…this was what he'd been meant for, just as I was meant to help advance humanity. Seducing him was a dangerous, damaging fool's game, but I could help him in other ways and see a little of the person he had been and might yet be again. And bask a little in that passion he showered on me and his idea of the girl I had been.

"Mr. Shepard, I'd be delighted to help you."


End file.
